Spyware Doctor 2006 [Old Version] :: Education by Design Store

Customer Reviews

Fine Job of Spycatching, but....

2006-11-17
This software works great on a one-user account machine. On a machine with multiple users, it was very buggy. It didn't show it was running in the system tray on accounts other than the one is was installed under and it brought things to a grinding halt if you clicked the desktop icon on these accounts. Recommended for one; not recommeneded if multiple accounts exist on a machine.

Spyware Doctor 2006

2006-11-10
Product works well but causes slight degrade in speed of opening web sites

Slow me down

2006-10-01
When I installed Spyware Doctor, that is exactly what it did - slooooowed me down. It hung up on the first scan - not a good sign, but then worked on the second attempt. I believe this to be a very good program for preventing spyware on you computer, but there are some big caveats. With OnGuard background monitoring activated, it used about 95% of CPU resources. Obviously I couldn't do anything else with my system. I turned off OnGuard and things seemed ok for awhile. Even with this turned off and all automatic scanning disabled, every so often the program did something in the background which utilized around 95% of my CPU. Again I couldn't do anything else.

It also appears to conflict with my McAfee antivirus program. Every time I shut down the computer there is one or two McAfee programs that now do not shutdown properly.

The box says it will run on a 60MHz Pentium with 128MB of RAM. This is absolutely false. This is worse advertising than Microsoft. I am using an older computer that has a 1.2GHz Athlon and 512MB of memory, and I simply cannot run this on my computer. I have disabled everything even automatic updates. This, of course, eliminates much of the benefits of having the program. When I want to scan, I will have to wait until I am ready to shutdown my computer, start the program, get the latest updates, run a scan and then shutdown - really!

Worst PC program I've ever used

2006-09-29
I'm not sure I understand those individuals who are not having problems with this Product. It, as many have said is lacking in quality, and if you care how your system performs, don't install Spyware. I had two problems. My system would not shut down and as most others, ran extremely slow. There is no support for this product as published. I corresponded with the Support Group 5 times and not once did they understand what I said.

Plugged up

2006-09-14
This product did locate spyware, but I can get better results with Ad-Aware. I bought this product, however it clogged up my system. I had to remove it and re-install it. When I was notified that upgrades were available, I could not get upgrades. I finally removed it from my computer. Ad-Aware is FREE and works great!

Resource Hog With Big Problems

2007-04-04
This is the worst security program I have ever had the misfortune to install on my computer. It is inconceivable to me that this program was rated highly by PC World. Each time I boot up my computer, it takes forever to load, and it prevents me from doing anything until it has finally finished whatever it is doing. After the program eventually loads, it causes a terrific slowdown in my computer, and the scans frequently result in lockups. I've turned off the anti virus protection in the program and otherwise adjusted the settings, but nothing seems to help. I recently downloaded the newer version of the program, hoping that the 2007 version would run more smoothly, but it was no better. Today, I finally gave up and uninstalled the program, and everything is back to normal. If you are thinking about this program, forget it.

Stay away.

2007-03-13
First of all I downloaded and purchased this product about a year ago while trying to diagnose and fix an infected PC belonging to someone in my family. I am sure you know the deal. Giant crisis, everything needs to get fixed ASAP or the world will come to an end shortly. This product (incidentally) DID NOT MANAGE TO FIX the problems with that PC but that is not the reason I am here writing a One-Star review (ZERO-Star reviews are not a permitted choice, more's the pity).

After all Adaware, the Microsoft Spyware removal tool as well as Spybot Search and destroy were all unable to fix that particular PC's problems. I will not blame Spyware Doctor for being similarly stumped. Eventually I was able to rescue document files from that PC and then I needed to reinstall Windows from scratch beginning with a hard disk format (the joys of providing tech support to your extended family).

The company PCTools, says they are selling you the program and a one year subscription to the latest pattern files. WHAT THEY CAREFULLY MANAGE TO HIDE IS THAT YOU WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY ENROLLED AND YOUR CREDIT CARD WILL BE CHARGED EVERY YEAR unless you specifically go in and cancel the subscription. Remember that subscription the you never knew you signed up for? Yeah, that's the one you need to go in and cancel.

This tasty morsel of information is hidden FAR FAR away from view in what looks like the end user license agreement. How many of us read those any more?

One cancelled credit card later I am about to dispute the charge with the Credit card provider and it looks like PCTools tried to charge me before one full year had elapsed.

STAY AWAY

Spyware Doctor Tops Them A!!!

2007-03-08
The reason I decided to purchase Spyware Doctor 2006 was because the backup CD Registry Cleaner [...]. had cracked, may be due to age. Since I had liked this software a lot, I had tried to re-order a new one, but for one reason my online transaction failed to go through. So I came across Software Doctor at Amazon. For years I had heard rave reviews about this software. Nonetheless, I remained a fervent skeptic because of past false appraisals of various anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. However, I decided to give this product the benefit of the doubt, by purchasing Spyware Doctor 2006, rather than Spyware Doctor 2007 (because I wanted to test how the older version was working).

After two weeks of usage, I am convinced that Spyware Doctor is a great product. It runs smoothly. even its slow scan is much faster than many fast scans of other anti-spyware products that I have used. In addition it is user-friendly with Symantec NAV 2005 (which I still use) as well as another anti-virus/spyware program SpyBouncer. This is in contrast with Webroot Spysweeper, which greedily tried to greedily monopolize the whole anti-virus/anti-spam scenario, resulting in the hogging of many bytes on my computer. I think Webroot Spysweeper is one of the worst anti-spyware/anti-virus spyware products ever made.

At the moment, Spyware Doctor 2006 is working in great harmony with Symantec and SpyBouncer. In light of Spy Doctor 2006's spectacular performance, I may later upgrade to Spy Doctor 2007.

Average anti-spyware program

2007-02-23
I've had this program for a year and found it to be kind of annoying. It started with the blocking of what seemed like every website I visited from CNN to the NY Times. Eventually I just turned that feature off. I also found the software to be a serious resource hog. I found it to be just as good at trying to find spyware as Ad-Aware and Spybot but those programs are free. Plus Spybot and Windows Defender offer real time protection and don't use as much resources as Spyware Doctor. Eventually I just let the subscription lapse. By the way, don't even think about installing this program on more than one machine. I installed it on my computer and when I installed it on my laptop it bounced the subscription from my computer. With the quality and free anti-spyware software that is available, I can't really recommend this software especially if you have two machines at home.

Spyware Doctor

2007-01-07
Dose what it says it will. Works great and finds all the add ware and things you don't want on your computer.