Command-line switches?

[Vanguard]

Microsoft AntiSpyware Version: 1.0.509

Does anyone know what are the command-line switches for MSAS? I am
tired of MSAS interrupting my use of my computer when it is scheduled to
run. Unlike Scheduled Tasks, you cannot configure MSAS to *not* run if
the computer is busy, you cannot configure how long it will retry after
the scheduled time until the computer does go idle, and you cannot
schedule multiple times. I'd like to run MSAS from the command line so
I could add a scheduled event to run it but I don't know which .exe to
run and what are its command-line switches. Didn't find anything in a
Google search, either. Maybe Giant didn't bother providing for
command-line operation.

 

[Bill Sanderson]

Check the unofficial faq in my sig, below. There are command line switches,
some of them have been observed to work, and you can use them to do a
scheduled scan, I believe, including one with no GUI display.

No guarantees of any sort of accuracy or efficacy whatsoever. May change
without notice, etc, etc.

(and a word of warning: I turned off the gui on the scans on my machine,
and have never managed to turn it back on!)

 

[Vanguard]

Check the unofficial faq in my sig, below. There are command line
switches, some of them have been observed to work, and you can use
them to do a scheduled scan, I believe, including one with no GUI
display.

No guarantees of any sort of accuracy or efficacy whatsoever. May
change without notice, etc, etc.

(and a word of warning: I turned off the gui on the scans on my
machine, and have never managed to turn it back on!)

Thanks for the info. I've now got a scheduled event configured to run
at multiple times but wait until the computer has been idle for 20
minutes and kill the task if the computer ceases to be idle. I still
wanted the popup window to appear when the scan was running (so I would
know what was sucking up the CPU cycles), so I run:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft
AntiSpyware\GIANTAntiSpywareMain.exe" -scan -withui

The defect with this execute is that MSAS is left loaded after the scan
ends or gets aborted. If you leave MSAS loaded all the time then it is
not a problem. However, if you only want MSAS loaded when the scheduled
scan executes then you're left with it running in memory. I suppose I
could write a .bat file that ran the scan and then followed with a
taskkill command to kill off the MSAS process but I'll just leave it as
it is now (always running).

 

[Bill Sanderson]

It behaves rather strangely. On my machine, it runs two scans at 10:00 AM.

So, once those finish, when I run Microsoft Antispyware, I get the results
UI. I have to run it three times to actually bring up the program UI and do
anything useful with it.

I would expect most or all of this behavior to change with beta2.

 

[Vanguard]

It behaves rather strangely. On my machine, it runs two scans at
10:00 AM.

Okay, I can't resist. Once you scheduled a scan using command-line
switches and using Task Scheduler to run the scan, you did remember to
disable the scheduled scan configured inside MSAS, right? I forgot to
do this and, yep, got 2 scans running at the same time.

I would expect most or all of this behavior to change with beta2.

Hopefully Microsoft will drop the code to perform in-program scheduling
and instead have it simply add an event to Scheduled Tasks so you can
manage all your scheduled runs in one place and use all the options
available there. That way you don't need to leave MSAS running in order
to get the scheduled scan to execute.

 

[Bill Sanderson]

Okay, I can't resist. Once you scheduled a scan using command-line
switches and using Task Scheduler to run the scan, you did remember to
disable the scheduled scan configured inside MSAS, right? I forgot to do
this and, yep, got 2 scans running at the same time.

That might be it except that I haven't scheduled via the task scheduler, so
there's something more subtle!

Hopefully Microsoft will drop the code to perform in-program scheduling
and instead have it simply add an event to Scheduled Tasks so you can
manage all your scheduled runs in one place and use all the options
available there. That way you don't need to leave MSAS running in order
to get the scheduled scan to execute.

That's what I am expecting--between having portions of the code run as a
service, and using the OS's capabilities for such things as updates and
scheduling, I'm hoping a lot will change--perhaps I'm hoping for too
much--we'll see.

 

[Guest]

That might be it except that I haven't scheduled via the task
scheduler, so there's something more subtle!


That's what I am expecting--between having portions of the code run as
a service, and using the OS's capabilities for such things as updates
and scheduling, I'm hoping a lot will change--perhaps I'm hoping for
too much--we'll see.

Well, and in case you are still watching this thread, using command-line
switches to run a scheduled event in Task Scheduler for MSAS doesn't
work. Well, it works partially. The scheduled scan will kick off at
the scheduled time but MSAS won't obey requests for it to terminate. I
didn't want MSAS running its scan when I was using the host. In Task
Scheduler, the event was configured to NOT run unless the computer had
been idle for 20 minutes. The idea was to let MSAS do its scan but when
I won't using the host. When the scheduled event gets executed, MSAS
refuses to abort when I'm using the host. So its massive disk scanning
still interferes with my use of my host. Rude SOB utility! So for now
on until they fix this, I'll just run the scans manually. Argh!

 

[Bill Sanderson]

Well, and in case you are still watching this thread, using command-line
switches to run a scheduled event in Task Scheduler for MSAS doesn't work.
Well, it works partially. The scheduled scan will kick off at the
scheduled time but MSAS won't obey requests for it to terminate. I didn't
want MSAS running its scan when I was using the host. In Task Scheduler,
the event was configured to NOT run unless the computer had been idle for
20 minutes. The idea was to let MSAS do its scan but when I won't using
the host. When the scheduled event gets executed, MSAS refuses to abort
when I'm using the host. So its massive disk scanning still interferes
with my use of my host. Rude SOB utility! So for now on until they fix
this, I'll just run the scans manually. Argh!

I can't say that I'm too surprised. I'm sure this will be improved on, but
it sure hasn't been yet.