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Install Spybot Search and Destroy

Last modified: 2011-12-25 12:25:25 EET

Spybot - Search & Destroy, often called Spybot or Spybot S&D, is a free program for kicking spyware, adware and scareware out of your computer for good. It also provides some passive protection by blocking many known malicious sites using Windows' hosts file and Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox configuration.

Go to Spybot - Search & Destroy download page, scroll down to section "Hosted by Safer-Networking" (the upper section leads to other websites and this might cause some confusion) and click on any Download here buttons.

Click on Download Spybot - Search & Destroy <version number (size)>.

Installing Spybot - Search & Destroy

After downloading and launching the setup file, choose your language - English should be alright. Click OK to confirm:

Click Next here (yes, we have many "Next's" coming up ):

Don't we all just love all those License Agreements? Click I accept the agreement and then click the Next button:

Destination folder is OK, so click Next here again (if you happen to have some older version of Spybot installed already, setup will ask if it is ok to install the new version in the same folder - click Yes there):

Now we've come to a part where blindly clicking Next is not good!
Deselect Additional languages and Skins to change appearance first (we never really need either of them). Select Explorer file scan plugin (in file context menu) - this will add an option to scan just a file or folder with Spybot - Search & Destroy. Click Next:

Default Start Menu folder is ok, so click Next here again:

And again the thing I warned you about. Nobody likes cluttered Desktop and Quick Launch toolbar. Keep them clean so that you can find the necessary items easily. As we will not use Spybot very often and we will automate it later on, we do not really need its icons anywhere else than Start menu. So uncheck Create desktop icons and Create a Quick Launch icon. But do not hurry on yet!
Under "Permanent protection", uncheck Use system settings protection (TeaTimer), because this thing will ask you a lot of questions all the time and it really is a nuisance when installing/removing programs or modifying Windows settings.
And now to the best part - you get to click Next again!

Next we have a summary screen, click Install here:

First, Spybot - Search & Destroy downloads additional files to be up-to-date right away:

After that the program will be installed. If someone happens to have an older version of Spybot installed already, the setup might pop up some dialog boxes with "File is read-only" warning, click Retry there.

And then Spybot - Search & Destroy is finally ready for some action! 
Security Center integration adds Spybot Search & Destroy status to Windows XP's Security Center or Windows Vista's and 7's Action Center so that you can be reminded in case Spybot's definitions are out of date.
Click Finish to close installer and start the program.

For Windows Vista and 7 users, this will pop up another User Account Control warning about Security Center integration. Click Continue or Yes.

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