Hello gumboman and welcome to the Community.

 

Have you checked that the settings allow for WSA to be shutdown manually?  See https:///t5/Webroot-SecureAnywhere-Antivirus/Temporarily-shut-off-of-webroot/m-p/18236#M998 for more information on the settings.

 

It should not hurt, however, to just leave WSA running at all times.  It will not interfere with your other security software, nor will it slow down the computer.  It should be compatible with any other software that you have installed and can act as a second layer of defense.

---

One major difference between SpySweeper and Webroot SecureAnywhere is that SpySweeper was an anti-spyware program and Webroot SecureAnywhere is an anti-malware program.  SpySweeper dealt specifically with spyware issues, whereas WSA deals with not just spyware, but also viruses, trojans, rootkits, and other forms of malware.  It's a more complete package than just the SpySweeper features.  In order to protect you against viruses, optimally, WSA should always be running.  Otherwise, if a virus gets through while WSA is turned off, remediation of that virus will be less effective.  A piece of spyware is not so hard to pull off the computer after the fact.  A piece of ZeroAccess malware or other types of advanced threats will prove far more difficult if it's not dealt with at the point of entry.

 

Consider a situation in which you turn off your anti-virus protection and a virus gets in.  There is no record of what the virus did that WSA can look at, because WSA was off.  It can pick up on a malicious executable when you turn it back on, and it can stop what the virus is doing at that time.  However, if while WSA was turned off, the virus shut off your Windows firewall, or broke your Windows updates, or destroyed something else, how would WSA have a record of that if it was sleeping on the job?  Conversely, with WSA turned on, as soon as a malicious threat attempts to drop onto the computer, WSA can block it before it has a chance to do anything nefarious.  Further, in cases in which the threat is not yet known to us, at least WSA is watching it and journaling everything it is doing.  Then, later, when the file is deemed Bad globally, WSA can take that journaled information and roll back all of the malicious changes made by the threat.  It couldn't do that if it wasn't watching what the suspicious file was doing the whole time.

 

You mentioned you have other programs for keeping watch over your computer in real time.  The good news is, you don't need them anymore.  The better news is, you can keep running them if you want to because Webroot will not conflict with them.  WSA was designed with compatibility in mind, so if you have some other antivirus program on the computer that wants to quarantine a threat, WSA will let it.  If that other program does nothing, then WSA steps in as your second layer of protection.

 

At this point, most people will start to wonder about doubling down on protection since, historically, anti-virus programs are big bulky resource hogs.  That is not the case with WSA.  If you open up Task Manager, you'll see that WSA is using an insignificant amount of RAM.  If you have an older computer, you'll be interested to know it's actually the perfect antivirus for older computers for this very reason.  On my test computer right now, it's using 2.5MB of RAM, which is a teeny tiny amount compared to whatever other antivirus software you're running.

 

So with better protection, compatibility, and low system resource usage, why shut it down?

 

That said, you can shut it down by right-clicking it in the system tray and choosing to Shut Down Protection.  Alternatively, you could disable whichever real-time shields you are not interested in having turned on by going to PC Security and toggling them off.  All said though, you're better off leaving the protection running.  There really is no net downside.

---

I see what you said about shutting it down by right clicking on the system tray, etc, but then, when I shut down the computer and start it up again, the program is back in operation live - how do I shut it down and only have it running when I manually start it up as with Spy Sweeper?  I just want to start it when I want to do manual scans?

 

gumboman

---

For all of the reasons specified above, that's not an option. If you were to be able to tell WSA to not boot up with Windows, components of infections that are triggered by the boot cycle would have a much better chance of going undetected.

---

Ok, I am uninstalling the program.  I have the annual renewal for Spy Sweeper and it renewed on 2/13/13.  I was not told at that time that Spy Sweeper was discontinued and being replaced by SecureAnywhere.  I am not pleased with this program and want to terminate my annual renewal and get a return on my 2013 renewal of Spy Sweeper that I thought I was getting.  What do I have to do to get my refund and discontinue this.  I am in the process of uninstalling SecureAnywhere.

 

Thanks for some advice

gumboman

---

You can fill out this Refund Request Form and I have deactivated your auto-renewal.

---