I did a search of the forums and didn't find anything directly pertaining to this, so I'm creating a new thread. Now that we have Portable ClamWin for anti-virus, what about an anti-spyware program? That would make my portable maintenance suite complete. I often have to scan my cousin's computer for viruses and spyware, and a portable anti-spyware program would make things so much easier.
works perfectly. Search the forums to see what you can get rid of.
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R McCue
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
Any others? I don't really like Spybot S&D that much. Nor do I really care for Ad-aware (too many commercial interests there--I don't trust them).
I've got
Ad-Aware (clean)
SpyBot (clean/immunize)
SpywareBlaster (immunize)
all working from thumbdrive...if I recall correctly, Ad-Aware and SpyBot you install to hard drive, then copy their folders to thumbdrive, while SpywareBlaster will install to thumbdrive (though you could drag the folder over), but am not 100% sure.
But they all work from thumbdrive
But SpywareBlaster works by writing its several thousand "kill-bits" in the registry of the host computer, once you click on "enable protection"! Otherwise it would have no protecting effect.
...OK, just had this thought: you can "disable" the protection again before you leave the host computer. Bit much of a fuss, if you ask me, but for the VERY paranoid it might be the thing to do. And if you forget to disable the protection again, at least the host computer is a bit safer than before and enriched by a few thousand entries more in the registry.
You are quite correct about what SpywareBlaster would do to the registry/host computer (and so would the immunize feature in SpyBot).
I think about anti-spyware applications being portable more in the sense of "will it function from the thumbdrive" and not what it will do the registry.
On a public/work/school computer, I don't even think about using any immunization function, I just scan it and try to repair what it finds. The immunize features is what I use if I am using the program to fix someone else's computer (at their request).