Spybot S&D TeaTimer, yes or no?

[Feek]

Realtime protection is always nice, but is the TeaTimer (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/faq/33.html) bit of S&D worth having running?

[Mark]

No. Well, not unless you're uber paranoid about every site you visit containing spyware - and if you are, some simple browser security settings will take care of most of that (the rest covered by AntiVirus which often covers most of the more pervasive spyware anyway).

Put it this way - I'm am running AntiVirus, and I don't even have S&D installed. I also know what software I've written that has had to have special hacks applied to get around what Teatimer does.

[Zirax]

I would most definitely have teatimer running. Before any changes are made to the registry you get to say yes/no. Handy for stopping programmes running on startup from a line in the install file.

I've got msn, quicktime and a few others denied the ability to write to the registry. Saves all that junk firing up and also "repairing" the registry when its run just incase you went in and disabled the service/altered the startup option

[Mark]

OK - didn't know it did registry protection as well. That sounds worthwhile.

The problem with Teatimer is it has a habit of locking files when they're changed. Fine most of the time but has been known to cause havoc when moving/deleting lots of files. Antivirus, of course, does the same, and can cause the same issues, but the more things you have scanning files, the more likely you are to run into problems, and for some unknown reason I've found Teatimer causes problems more often than Antivirus.

[Zirax]

I haven't come across the locking files problem but I do find when installing stuff the whole installer will freeze until I either confirm / deny a registry change

[Stan_Lite]

I haven't come across the locking files problem but I do find when installing stuff the whole installer will freeze until I either confirm / deny a registry change

That's the biggest PITA with it, you can't just set something installing and naff off - you have to keep an eye on it or you come back and it hasn't moved because it's waiting for your input.

Otherwise, it's a handy thing to have. I haven't had any trouble with it locking files yet either and I've been using it for about 3 years - maybe I'm just lucky.