General SecurityPost any general questions related to security, viruses or spyware here.
Mission Statement
WindowsBBS is an online community dedicated to easily accessible technical support for those using Microsoft operating systems and other Windows software.
Our goal is to become the leading resource for computer users that require assistance with their day-to-day computer usage, including full support for networking PC's, virus & malware removal, system upgrades and general support questions.
Yesterday I ran Spybot and Ad-aware scans and they showed a number of items that I then checked for deletion. This morning when I came to this BBS, it didn't recognize me and I had to enter my user ID and password. Once I'd done that, everything was back to normal and my past activities all appeared. I also lost my entry at 2 other sites. At 1 of them I had to rebuild my personal list of forums, then my past activities reappeared. At the other one, all was lost and I had to start all over again, rebuilding a fairly long list of items I keep track of. This isn't the first time I'd had any of those things happen, but it's the first time that they all happened and I had reason to suspect the cause.
I'm assuming that during those scans yesterday I zapped one or more cookies that are needed for regular activity at some of the Web sites I frequent. If that's true, has anyone else here ever had a similar experience? And what is the name of the cookie or whatever it is that I should remember to NOT delete the next time I do a scan?
Didn't find the information you thought to find? Check out these Similar Threads
If you have Spybot set to high priority scanning, or Ad-aware configured for a full scan, then you could easily delete the cookies. The ones you want will say something like.....Bobbo@windowsbbs or whatever your username on the PC is.
Open Spybot in advanced mode and click settings in the left pane, then ignore cookies. Once the list populates, check the ones you want to keep. You will need to add cookies found by Ad-aware to the ignore list if you want to keep them.
I normally keep Spybot set in the Default mode. As you suggested, I switched to Advanced mode and opened Settings, Cookies. There must have been 4-5 dozen cookies listed there, 7 of them seem to be for this BBS. There were also 4 or 5 for each of the other sites I frequent and don't want to lose. All the rest I'd like cleaned out.
Some of Spybot's terminology confuses me, though. At the top of the Ignore Cookies window, it says "Ignore some browser cookies during the scan." Below that it says, "This is a list of cookies ... already listed on your exclude list. Cookies you check here will not be cleaned when you clean usage tracks." What does that mean? Should I check the boxes by the cookies I believe to be keepers (such as windowsbbs.com)? And will all the other cookies, that I suspect I don't want to keep, get cleaned out the next time I run a scan, or do I have this whole deal backwards?
I've never gone inside Spybot like that before, so any advice would be helpful.
Could be wrong, but unless you click settings, then settings again and set the scan priority to high or highest, Spybot won't normally list usage tracks (cookies), and if it does, they surely won't be prechecked for removal. Yes, you want to place a check beside any that you don't want removed. Any time you scan after doing so, no matter how high the priority, those cookies will be skipped. Good possibility they were picked up and deleted by Ad-aware, especially if you run in full scan mode.
BTW, you probably don't need 7 different cookies for this BBS. One will be windowsbbs.com and another www.windowsbbs.com One of each should be sufficient.
My Spybot has always been set at the Normal level, and I left it there. As you suggested, I checked all the boxes by the cookies in Spybot that appeared to be ones to keep. Now it seems to be a matter of just waiting a few days to find out whether the good ones continue to work as they should and whether the bad ones get listed and deleted correctly.
When I run an Ad-aware scan, I usually use the Smart system scan, not the Full scan. When I ran it yesterday, that's probably when some "good" cookies got zapped. But I still don't understand why in the past just 1 of the 3 sites I want to remember my identity and settings would go bad and not all 3 like happened this morning.
It's indeed sobering to realize how often I'll find out how much I still don't know. That's when I most appreciate being able to take advantage of other people's knowledge as I can here. Thanks again.
You're quite welcome Bobbo. Was this by chance the first time you've run the new Ad-aware, and possibly why it could have been responsible for the cookie deletion?
BTW, thank YOU, for your diligent reports of new reference files being available for both Ad-aware and Spybot. It's a kind and usually thankless task that benefits many.
"Was this by chance the first time you've run the new Ad-aware"
Nope. I've had Ad-aware for a long time, keep it up to date, and run it probably an average of once a week or so.
What mystifies me about this cookie problem is the inconsistency of it. Usually all those sites remember me, but sometimes one or another will lose me while the others won't, and today for the first time all three of them lost me. This BBS is the easiest to straighten out because all I have to do is sign in. The others require tedious rebuilding. I can't spot a cause and effect relationship that will show how to fix it. It does seem that the problem started several months ago and got a lot worse here just recently. Significant?
You can always check the log files to see which program deleted them, and may even be able to restore them, rather than rebuild. Of course, if you get them ignored by both programs OK, you wouldn't need to, unless you deleted cookies from within IE options.
It happened again! This time it occurred right after my Netscape 7.1 browser crashed while I was surfing the Web. No malware scans, just a NS crash. As before, all 3 sites wouldn't recognize me. I logged in again here, so that's no big deal. But the other 2 sites have again lost all my lists which will have to be rebuilt. Drat! It's possible that the earlier incidents were the results of NS freezes or crashes, too, rather than Spybot or Ad-aware scans. Although it's still odd that sometimes it was 1 site and these last 2 times it's all 3 sites losing me.
In such a situation, would a System Restore recover the site (cookie?) losses? If anybody has this situation figured out, I'd rather learn from someone else's experience than go through the SR hassle to find out (or if it wouldn't work anyway) if I can avoid it.
No, a SR won't restore your cookies. Strange that a Netscape crash would clear them. Well, thinking back, you use Netscape rather than IE, right? Still can't say why a crash would clear the cookies. Might better be addressed in that forum. Possibly using a cookie manager would retain them in the event of a NS crash.
Was this by chance the first time you've run the new Ad-aware, and possibly why it could have been responsible for the cookie deletion?
