PC Magazine

By John Clyman - March 2, 2004

SpyHunter 1.4.42

SpyHunter was always one of our favorite video games (admit it, the music is running through your head), so we're extra disappointed that Enigma Software Group co-opted the name to put out such a mediocre product. SpyHunter 1.4.42 provides no blocking capabilities, offers only brief descriptions of detected spyware, and includes virtually no help or documentation. Its scanning was extremely slow and, on heavily infected systems, sometimes seemed to freeze entirely. These limited capabilities and minimal configuration options make it hard for us to recommend SpyHunter, even though it was one of the better apps at spyware detection.

Even under the best of circumstances, SpyHunter's scan speed was tediously slow: On a pristine Windows xp system, it required nearly 11 minutes. And on some of our infected machines, we had to cancel scans that appeared to have hung after half an hour or more. When it finally did manage to complete a scan, it detected spyware quite respectably, but its removal results were mediocre at best.

Sometimes a simple interface deftly masks complex functions, but in SpyHunter's case the interface is simple because the features are minimal. You can click on a button to start a scan, or pull down a menu to scan just a subset of the system (memory, Registry, cookies, or drives). The scan results appear as list box items with severity ratings. You can select items one at a time or all at once, but you can't easily select all traces associated with a single spyware product. In some cases, dozens will be.

SpyHunter's help system is disappointing, consisting of a Windows file containing just two paragraphs of text.

Although SpyHunter includes a live- update capability, it doesn't tell you when or whether a new program file is available. You have to click the Program Update button, reinstall, and reboot, without knowing whether you're going to get a newer version or not. Checking to ensure you have current spyware definition files is more seamless.

Compared with many other products offering richer features at similar prices, SpyHunter offers little reason to choose it.


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