Customer Reviews

PC Tools Spyware Doctor + Antivirus 2009 Version 6.0

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

I purchased Spy Doctor after having discovered my browser was hijacked, that is, when I use it, a new copy pops up with unwanted ads. I ran Spy doctor, but it did not remove the problem. I emailed tech support, and they sent me some explicit instructions, including building a log and sending it to them. I did so. Finally they sent me an email saying my complaint was "closed" and that the problem had been referred to their research group. That was 2 months ago, and they will not respond back and have not fixed the problem. Basically I wasted the purchase price, because I bought it to solve this problem. I don't fault them for not having an immediate fix, but quitting on the problem? Wow!

I purchased this product to replace Spy Sweeper because Spy Sweeper wasnt catching everything.Spy Sweeper was a good program but not the best.I ran Spyware Doctor for about 2 months and it works really well but a little too well.For some reason my computer kept getting slower and slower.It took 30-40 seconds to open a browser window and about the same amount of time to execute a program file.For the life of me i couldnt figure out why.I shut down the Spyware Doctor and my computer was faaast again,WAY FAST! I wrote to Pc Tools regarding the problem and they did respond wanting me to download some other type of software to see if there were any program conflicts.Ive been through that kinda stuff before so i just uninstalled the SD and guess what??? I put my Spy Sweeper Back in.Now my computer is fassst again.Spy Sweeper may not catch all the spyware but no spyware program is perfect.Whats the purpose of having good security if your pc cant open a browser window anyway?

I did a trial of this product before purchasing the Webroot equivalent (Spyware Sweeper) when this product tried to put suspicious things in my startup on about the third run of the program. This was probably nothing sinister, but the program did not tell me what it was doing this and I did NOT allow it!

I did note that this program counts each registry entry and each file and each bookmark etc. of anything it considers spyware as an instance. With one spyware program it can report more than a hundred threats found. It is an attempt to make them seem more thorough, but I am not convinced. I sure hope other programs do not follow suit.

Spyware Sweeper is now crashing on me nearly every sweep (a directory of MIDI files seems to consistently confuse it), so I am in the market again. I am a little nervous about this one and am hoping to find another alternative (unfortunately I cannot recommend anything at this point).

Although I was quite pleased with another anti-virus product, I had downloaded a trojan virus that it did not detect nor eradicate. After reading several online reviews that highlighted Spyware Doctor as one of the best, I purchased it. It detected and eradicated the virus that was causing my system problems. It continues to run in the background and has kept my system clean since it's install. I would certainly reccomend it to anyone in need of a good anti-virus package.

I bought and installed Spyware Doctor about 10 weeks ago to eliminate some annoying popups. It fixed that problem, but my computer (running Windows XP SP2) has been running slower and s l o w e r and s l o w e r to the point where it took 20 minutes to boot, and would stop and crash at least once a day. I was seriously thinking of replacing the computer (which is now 4 years old) until I read other reviews of this product and realized that my experience was quite common. I uninstalled Spyware Doctor, and now my computer is running like new once more. I'll never use this program again.

Like others, I got this after my computer was hijacked. I installed PC Tools Spyware on the computer that was infected, and then also on my new laptop.
The computer that was infected then had problems with the Operating System. It could have been because of the malavolent hijacking virus I was trying to remove, I don't know. I took the machine in to my own Gurus, and for $180 they restored everything. And put in MalwareBytes. Love it. Free edition is great. [Be careful thought, there is something called Malware Pro which is NOT it, but takes over your computer too. Ugh.]
But then my new laptop with the PC Tools Spyware program SLOWED DOWN so much it was painful. I could sit back and wait three minutes for something to happen.
Just now I uninstalled it. Now everything is back to normal.
After reading all the complaints here, especially about service, I'm going to challenge the bill when in comes on my credit card. Hope others do too.

The PC tools product, Spyware Doctor, slowed down my computer by over 50% and so it became unusable and was a waste of money. I had to totally uninstall it to get my PC's performance back to where it was. Getting rid of the product was not straight forward and required a search on Google in order to remove all of the componants. - A total rip-off, really!

I was skeptic when I read all the bad reviews saying " omg my cpu is too high, makes my computer too slow" w/e. It does. But running scans from even widely popular Scanners like McAfee and Norton does same thing when it scans. I'd know. But scans are preferred to run at times when your inactive from the computer or at least during the night, when your sleeping, since they all take too long and uses a lot of cpu. Plus, you can always disable IntelliGuard in SD for better cpu performance, or yet, disable Spydoctor from booting in start-up via msconfig and only use it every month or when you think your having another trojan crisis.

I've used Norton, McAfee, and Lavasoft. I'd rank Spydoctor up with them, maybe slightly better - in catching the most infected files.

I'm a happy registered customer with Registry Mechanic and SpyDoctor w/ Antiviruse. It is not perfect. It does not catch all trojans. But it's good for me. 4/5.

This program was a CPU hog. I don't know what it was doing but when monitored by Task Manager it seemed like it was always messing around and sometimes really slowed up my computer. In my opinion this program was a waste of money and a little scary.

Before this I was using Spybot-Search & Destroy in conjunction with Spyware Blaster for ActiveX spyware. Both are freeware. My daughter runs the same but she got hijacked by a malware trojan. I thought I would try this on my computer first before using it on my daughter's. It found a lot of additional spyware, which I removed. My computer hasn't been the same since. It froze, didn't go onto the internet, etc. I called support and they had me do a restore, but it didn't help much. I spent a whole day rounding up fixes, including a repair install of Windows XP, hitting a lot of tech sites, and downloading specialized scripts. The only reason I'm able to write this review is that I found a specialized routine on a tech site to repair & renumber Winsock TCP/IP layers ruined by Spyware Doctor.

IN SHORT, DON'T BUY THIS. YOU'LL JUST BE SLIGHTLY BETTER OFF THAN BEING HIJACKED.