New Microsoft Anti-Spyware conflicts with Dantz backup

I have been running Webroot SpySweeper, the best anti-spyware program out there. But when Microsoft launched Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) Home I had to give free a try. This is just the rebranded version of the software Microsft bought earlier this year. It seems that they didn’t bother to do much compatibility testing.

I installed it on both my laptop and my desktop at home. On the desktop computer I run Dantz backup. The laptop and other computers on my LAN have the client software on them. I did not install msSpyware on my wife’s Dell laptop. I have a back-up script that runs every night around 2:00am and backs up all the computers on the network to a spare harddrive. After two days I checked the back-up status and noticed that my laptop wasn’t being backed up. There were “not sufficient permission” errors and “Can’t find back-up client” errors. In windows the two computers can see each other and share common drives. The only thing I changed was adding MS Spyware. Of course the behavior of Dantz could look like spyware. But I didn’t even get a message like “program Dantz is trying to access the harddrive”. I removed the Ms Spyware from the laptop thinking that it was preventing the back-up program from attaching. The script still failed. So I turned off spyware on the main desktop computer. The script ran just fine. So MS Spyware was not allowing the main back-up machine to reach out and attach to the back-up client and copy down files. Again no message. You would think it would be smart enough to tell the difference between a back-up program and spyware. Bye Bye Msft anti-spyware until you figure this out!