The real amateurish thing for Microsoft to do would be
for them to abritrarily decide what to do after a scan
simply because it's what the programmers like, not what
the end-users like. This is a sure-fire way for
Microsoft to lose more users to its competitors.
Microsoft has always, or almost always, looked at what
the end-users liked before designing or re-designing a
program, while a lot of its competition did exaclty the
opposite.
Now back to the other comments you made in your post.
An unexpected reboot can also imply there's something
wrong with the system. Many users might think their
system is infected with a virus such as the blaster
virus, which if I'm not mistaken caused people's systems
to reboot constantly. This IS NOT good programming
practice, as this will cause more problems and complaints
than it's worth. Not to mention the many people going to
Microsoft's Support pages, and trying to find out why
their system is contantly rebooting after a scan is run,
only to find out that the way the program is designed is
what's causing their problems, which will likely cause
them to stop using the product. All this IS NOT good far
anyone, especially Microsoft, as they will likely have to
address this in the form of a security patch or a new
version.
Another problem that I see with using this type of
feature is that some spyware/malware program, or even a
virus, Trojan, or Internet worm could use this feature to
fake MSAS into thinking it has just completed a scan,
causing the system to reboot. Once the system reboots,
and before MSAS loads, the program installs onto the
users system, and takes total control of the system.
This wouldn't be the first time that a damaging program
acted in this manner. Look at all the programs that can
turn off your AV program's scanner.
The best way to deal with this is for the scanner and
removal tool to be improved so this isn't even necessary
in the future.
The last thing someone, especially a system
administrator, needs is to happen is to run a scan, and
try to correct some other problems on the system, only to
have the system reboot itself before the other problems
are fixed, causing an important system file to be
corrupted. Just think of the nightmare this system
administrator has to deal with, as all the data on the
system might be lost, including some important files that
someone else in the company needs in order to complete
the project(s) they are working on. This is just one
reason that auto-rebooting a system after a scan is
simply stupid. Not to mention the fact that if you
wanted to see what it found and removed, you would have
to open MSAS, go to Tools > Spyware Scan > View Spyware
Scan History, and most users simply wouldn't do this.
This would make most users not realize that their system
is being compromised by the same spyware over and over,
which will defeat the entire purpose of the program to
begin with (i.e., to make it easier to protect and rmove
any possible spyware/malware from a system).
Also, the best way to currently deal with many forms of
spyware is to run a full system scan in Safe Mode.
Alan
