Fix errors relating to swdsvc.exe and pctstray.exe

Posted on September 13, 2008 at 5:29 am

Is a process called swdsvc.exe eating up all your memory or hogging up your CPU? Or what about annoying pop-ups with pctsTray.exe and some random error? These are errors usually related to Spyware Doctor from PCTools, which is a pretty good anti-spyware program.

If you are getting popup error messages in Windows related to pctstray.exe, you should first try to uninstall Spyware Doctor and make sure your computer is running normally. Sometimes there are viruses that use that process name, but have no relation to Spyware Doctor!

If you don’t even have the software installed on your computer and you are getting error messages with pctstray.exe in them, then you probably have a virus. If you did buy Spyware Doctor, then you probably just need to uninstall the software and download the latest version. If you don’t even know what it is, uninstall it. Sometimes computers come bundled with this type of software, such as with Dell and how you have to remove Sonic Update Manager.

As for swdsvc.exe, this is another process that runs in Spyware Doctor and it may occasionally start using up a high amount of CPU (100% CPU most of the time) or memory when you try to perform a full scan of your computer. Again, if you did not install this software and do no want it, just uninstall it and that’ll solve your problem.

Otherwise, you may can try a couple of things to prevent swdsvc and pctstray from overloading your computer (reminds me of the svchost.exe high CPU problem!):

Method 1: If you have ThreatFire installed, you’re pretty much running two applications that hook into every process and monitor everything your system does. So if both are running at the same time, something crazy happens and you end up with high CPU usage.

Method 2: Turn off auto-updates in Spyware Doctor. Users have reported that CPU usage spikes and the computer slows to a crawl when the program tries to auto-update. Disabling this and manually downloading updates occasionally might help.

Method 3: Do not install the Malware Detective tool. It is a tool used by the developers that sends them registry entries and filenames so that they can troubleshoot a spyware infection on their end. This is great, however, it can also be the cause of the swdsvc.exe high CPU usage.

Method 4: If you have Zone Alarm installed on your computer, uninstall it. There is apparently some issue between Spyware Doctor and Zone Alarm that causes a spike in CPU usage.

Method 5: Enable Kernel compatibility mode and see if that does anything. Under Settings, then General Settings.

Method 6: Disable IntelliGuard Protection, restart computer and see if you CPU spike problem goes away.

Alternatively, your problem could be related to running other real-time monitoring products, such as an anti-virus program like Norton, etc. You will either have to download the latest version and hope that fixes the problem or uninstall Spyware Doctor or the conflicting app.

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