Help with Spybot Results

[MartinS]

Hi
I have just updated Spybot and run it, and it's come up with the following 'problem', yet reading a page on the Microsoft site (search for FirewallDisableNotify on the page), it appears this key is expected.

Windows Security Center.FirewallDisableNotify: Settings (Registry change, nothing done)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Security Center\FirewallDisableNotify!=dword:0

Or am I missing something? I'm hoping to be able to simply exclude from future searches, but was just surprised to see the above, so before I exclude, or let Spybot remove it, can anyone confirm what I should be doing?
Regards
Martin

Can anyone help

[Mr T.]

Originally Posted by MartinS

Hi
I have just updated Spybot and run it, and it's come up with the following 'problem', yet reading a page on the Microsoft site (search for FirewallDisableNotify on the page), it appears this key is expected.

Windows Security Center.FirewallDisableNotify: Settings (Registry change, nothing done)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Security Center\FirewallDisableNotify!=dword:0

Or am I missing something? I'm hoping to be able to simply exclude from future searches, but was just surprised to see the above, so before I exclude, or let Spybot remove it, can anyone confirm what I should be doing?
Regards
Martin

Can anyone help

Hi Martin,

I get these notices each time I run my SpyBot and just delete them, as far as I know, they are just a notification of thisng shwich have happened to your MS setup (e.g. update etc.) and other applications once you've run an update.

I always just delete the lot.

Bren.

[Bantam]

It's usually because you've disabled the Windows firewall and told it to stop bugging you about it (that tick box that says 'I'll deal with it myself thankyou very much' ).

BTW - As spyware killers go, Microsoft now do one of their very own which is very very good. http://www.microsoft.com/antispyware will sort you out.

[Alun]

Originally Posted by Bantam

BTW - As spyware killers go, Microsoft now do one of their very own which is very very good. http://www.microsoft.com/antispyware will sort you out.

Ahh, that was their cunning plan. Allow *everything* through for ten years and write a patch to remove everything that did.

Alun (one of the millions of Micro$oft beta testers worldwide since msdos 3)

[MartinS]

Originally Posted by Bantam

It's usually because you've disabled the Windows firewall and told it to stop bugging you about it (that tick box that says 'I'll deal with it myself thankyou very much' ).

BTW - As spyware killers go, Microsoft now do one of their very own which is very very good. http://www.microsoft.com/antispyware will sort you out.

Strangely enough I use the XP firewall as I have a hardware firewall on my wireless router to back it up, but as you all say it's OK to just delete it, that's what I'll do.
Thanks guys
Regards
Martin

[Bantam]

Originally Posted by Alun

Alun (one of the millions of Micro$oft beta testers worldwide since msdos 3)

You too?

I do remember upgrading my Wang Professional 8086 machine from CP/M to MS-Dos 2.0 on the 10Mb hard disk.

Mark (who was about 13 or 14 at the time IIRC).

[Alun]

I entered into the fray somewhat later than that, possibly 1989/90. I do remember having a computer magazine (pcplus I think) where someone had written in saying that as a pc only had 640k, selling microfloppies (who uses that term anymore?) with a 1.44mb capacity was unnecessary and excessive!

A bit later at school, one lad was virtually laughed out of the computer room (by the teacher) for suggesting that the borrowed "multimedia" cd-roms could be copied.
How things change.

[NeilB]

Lets not look too far back but........

I used to fix 5mb disks that were two foot across. You could adjust the head gap with plastic feeler gauges! Now heads fly micro mm above the disk surface.

The 1k graphite core storage boxes were 6 foot x 2 foot and used to fail because dust stopped the graphite core flip/flopping. A quick kick usually dropped the dust out and made it work again.

Neil
Who's been fixing computers for longer than he ever really wanted to......

[Bogwoppit]

Nothing to say just look at the Sig!

[MartinS]

I emailed the results to Spybot as well (just out of interest) and got the following response:

Originally Posted by Spybot S&D

Since the Detections Update from July 25, 2005, Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.4 has been detecting Security Risks (renamed to "Windows Security Center" on July 30) associated with Microsoft Security Center Registry changes. This is neither a false positive nor a bug. It is just an information.
Spybot-S&D only wants to bring to your attention that "someone" disabled one or more notifications in the Windows Security Center, e.g. the notifications that your virus protection is not active or not up-to-date. If you changed the settings yourself you can safely tell Spybot-S&D to exclude those detections from further scans.
In order to do so please right-click each in turn, then click "exclude this detection from future scans". That way, should any other part of security center settings change, Spybot-S&D will still detect those. The same is true if you have another security solution installed (like McAfee Security Center or Norton Internet Security). These programs do also disable
the Windows Security Center in order to take care of things themselves. The reason why the changes are flagged by Spybot-S&D is that there are also malware programs that disable the notifications so the user doesn't take note of his security tools not being effective.

Must say, very impressed with the response (it did take a few days, but nonetheless, they still replied). I have downloaded the Microsoft spyware tool and as yet have not installed it - I am currently running Adware & Spybot - if I move over to the MS one I guess I can remove one of the existing applications, or will the MS one mean I can lose both?
Regards
Martin