Spybot Freezes or Locks Up During a Scan - Spyware Help

Spybot is the popular (and free) anti-spyware scanning program that you can use to find and remove spyware and malware from your computer. Just like all software, there may be a time when it doesn't work like it should.

In some installations of Spybot you may experience a problem where Spybot will freeze during a system scan. If you open Task Manager it will show that the program is not responding and you will have to force it to close. If you run the scan again it may or may not go further before locking up again.

There is a way to get the scan to complete but you will have to do it this way each time you run a scan.

1. Open Spybot and leave it open without running a scan
2. Open Task Manager by right clicking your taskbar and clicking Task Manager or by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete
3. Click on the Processes tab
4. Right click on SpybotSD.exe, and choose Set Affinity
5. On the dialog box that opens, check or uncheck boxes so that only CPU 0 is checked
6. Go back to the running Spybot and run a scan to perform a successful scan.

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