when I attempt to launch spybot I get a popup that advises me that if I remove advertising robots, I may not be allowed to use their host programs. When I click ok my screen just blinks and spybot will not launch. Suggestions?

Try uninstalling and reinstallation. You could also try another download from a different mirror site and another installation. If it still does not work give Adaware a try.

The info in the popup is correct. But I have no idea why you see the popup... Could it be that Spybot is being blocked by a spyware program running in the background? Try turning off all background programs running and try to run Spybot. As Capt says, you can try to reinstall Spybot, or give Ad-Aware a try. Lavasoft, the maker of Ad-Aware has a companion program named AdSearch. AdSearch is a database of software known to contain spyware. You might search this database for the names of any software you have downloaded and installed lately. Best Luck, Bob

thank you, I decided to go with the adaware software. One other question, how do you know which spyware is good and which is bad?

To me it is all bad. I do not have any programs that have spyware that is required for them to work. Adaware will keep everything in a quarantine file, so if you accidently delete something you can restore it. You can check each item to see what it is associated with, and use the ignore listing for something that you need.

As far as I'm concerned, all Spyware, tracking cookies, etc. can go to h&ll. Cookies serve absolutely no purpose for me whatsoever, and in fact I have a program to delete them every time one is placed on the hard drive. As far as adware/spyware programs, that's the worst. I've found that for every Spyware program, there's an equally good, or better, program that's true freeware. Not to mention the performance loss on the computer and other problems. Quality download sites do not distribute spyware. So if you're selective about where you download from, you don't have to worry. The worst was buying a CD of software at a retail store that was Spyware! Who would have thought... sleazy b---tards. A feature of Spybot is that it gives you the option of deleting user-logs. If you are the only user of the computer there would be no reason to delete these logs, and in fact they can be quite useful. -Bob

the reason I ask is that my spybot program stopped working after I cleared the backup, or the folder which temporarily holds the deleted items.