Ewido ... not thrilled!

[dbarrow]

Having seen the various comments on Ewido, I tried the online scan which seems very efficient. That may be a handy tool to quickly clean up a crap infested machine.

To experiment, I dl the trial version and gave it a run.
Installed fine, ran scans, needless to say, found nothing.

I notice the active scanning and protection on.
I don't like things running in the background so I turn it off.

Notice the AdWatch icon flashing regularly with a registry modification ... like every few seconds. Note that this is Ewido updating a .dat

Not having any of that!
Go into Mike Lin startup control and find the Ewido entry and turn it off.
Comes right back.
Delete it.
Comes right back.

Now, I am starting to get aggrevated.
Go into MSconfig and turn it off.
Still keeps coming back.

Find that Ewido is running as a service.
Disable that.
Still keeps coming back.

Ok, this is my machine and Ewido has now crossed the threshold of ticking me off.

Uninstall program.
Ensure there are no leftover files.

Startup entry is still there and still keeps coming back no matter what I do....
Starting to remind me of Roxio!

End up doing extensive reg key purging with JV16 and even manual key deletions.
This thing is hooked all over the place!

Took me over an hour of hunting and killing and I'm still not sure if I am totally rid of it!

It may be a fine malware cleaner ... if you need one ... but I find the intrusive nature of the program and the absolute failure of a clean uninstall process extemely poor.

I will have to rank this program as a 1 and take it off my list of tools ... unless you plan to live with it forever.

Online scanning may be fine but don't dl and install it unless you plan to keep it and get the paid version.
And then, consider the overhead of having it run as a service not to mention the .dat files it piles up in your user/local settings/temp folder, which are considerable!

Should you install it and want to be rid of it ... plan on extensive reg pruning ... ala Roxio ... to kill it!

[mylanta]

Doug,
Not sure about others, but I never have tried anything but the online scanner, and lately, I think it has lost some steam and isn't doing the great things it was a year ago either.

[Seth]

I use the Ewido trial version on a daily basis. It consistantly outperforms any other malware scanner that I've tried. Nod32 is on par with it, but Nod isn't very good at spyware/adware.

I have on my bench a customers beautifull Sony Vaio desktop. It's highly infected and I was going to use it as a test machine for Part Two of "XP malware comparison". I first scanned with Ad-Aware and Spybot. Both found moderate spyware/adware. I began to run Ewido but quit half way. Why? Because at that point it had already found over 200 infections...about half of which were trojans, dialers, and backdoors. So anyway, System Recovery here I come.

dbarrow,

When you install Ewido, choose custom and you can choose to not install on demand, etc. I've always just uninstalled after I used it, but there should be an internal Ewido option to disable whatever.

[Seth]

That Sony Vaio?

Control Panel has a Vaio system recovery icon. The two options were: 1) Create system recovery discs, 2) Recover system without creatings discs.

Of course I chose 1 and was presented with this error, "The detected computer is not a Sony Vaio":confused: :eek:

After a nano second of thought, I realized the problem had to be the malware. I ran Ad-Aware to remove the minor stuff, but the problem remained. So, I let the big boy take the helm. Ewido proceeded to find and remove 329 serious instances of malware.

I tell ya, what a difference on reboot! I could actually open a window without waiting 5 minutes and having to wade through popups. Anyway, the recovery disc error was gone. I made the cd's and restored the computer.

The above is just the latest instance for me in a long string of "Thanks Ewido, you saved my ass again!"

[dbarrow]

I have no doubt it performs the job just fine ... if you need it.
What I found to be a problem was a ton of background activity, running as a service sucking resources, and generating a lot of .dat files in the temp folder.

You wouldn't normally notice it accessing the registry every few seconds except AdWatch was flashing away which drew me to it.

Not having that going on... I went to stop that activity, to no avail, and then got thoroughly ticked at it enough to uninstall, which it did not do cleanly leaving a load of crap in the registry and a bunch of files requiring extensive cleaning and purging. Reminds me of Roxio and NAV!

If you want it installed and resident, take the hit for the processing and all the hooks it seems to spread and be happy with it or save it for "stuck in the deep stuff up to your neck".

I don't have anything for it to clean, which it didn't, so I am not about to put up with it unless needed .... Gone! Otta here!

[rVidia]

dbarrow:

I would suggest installing ewido_micro, as all it is is the online scanner but as an executable, and the reason you're installing is for the scanner, right? And that's all you get :bounce: