Spybot-S&D 1.5.1.15 (September 3rd) is the current final and public release. While we are back at the drawing board for version 2.0, there is no current public alpha or beta release available.

For bugs fixed and new features in general, take a look at the Project Manager available on our forums.

• Do I need to uninstall version 1.4 before installing a current beta?
  If you do not uninstall 1.4, that should work fine, but you will end up with two entries in the Uninstall list. The clean approach would be to uninstall 1.4. You do not need to clean up the Recovery etc. folders the uninstaller leaves untouched.
• Is the beta version available at Neowin or other sites official?
  Neowin guessed the location and file name on our servers before this page was ready, but the version itself is fine. In general, a good place to look for beta versions is BetaNews. Just compare the version numbers to those published here.
• Which Windows versions are supported?
  Yes, we do now support the newest Vista (more here), and we do also support Windows 95 again (IE 5.5, HTML Help and Winsock2 updated needed). It also runs on Wine.
• Why is the interface still that ugly and looks a dozen years old?
  Other software changes the user interface every year, and we have to admit that's a good way to make users believe a lot has changed. Well, we have to admit that while we've spend a lot of time improving functionality and quality assurance on that, an overhaul of the user interface might also improve usability, so construction of a completely new user interface will start on late June or early July.

Known and fixed beta bugs:

• On Windows 95 B (not C) with old libraries, the background color "info background" (usually a light yellow) is not known, this crashes RichEdit controls. Either fix or MS update required.
• TeaTimer might crash after second change.
• The new Easter Egg might cause some endless brain loop, should you encounter two 4s, the first one is a 5 (can't tell more obviously :-D ).
• Buttons on IE plugin dialog do vanish when resizing updater dialog.
• /allhives should inform the user he better should run as admin if he does not, since loading remote hives needs admin rights.
• SDHelper page display problems when starting up with multiple tabs on IE7
• SpybotSD.exe /autoupdate should pass parameters to SDUpdate.exe and wait for its return.
• Automatically close SDUpdate.exe after messagebox that no updates are available.

• IE Plugin menu item might not appear on Vista+IE7 (workaround: type about:sdhelper; fix: installer updated)
• Installer didn't show all buttons in some of the new (46) languages (now defaults to english).
• Usage tracks didn't show up.
• Added "Back to mirror list" to updater (was only in context menu).
• Installer will no longer overwrite old Ignore lists.
• Changes to settings tree saved immediately now.
• TeaTimer did not see all 64 bit applications.
• Process list did not show paths for all 64 bit applications.
• Scanner did not find both instances if a file was in both 32 and 64 bit Program Files folder.
• Opera immunization was only for plugins (now cookies and content as well).
• Firefox immunization was missing.