Recipe for destroying CIS.

[Guest]

[mrahk]

I told before in this thread: https://forums.comodo.com/other_general_gui_etc_bugs/xp_os_lockup_with_new_version_of_comodo-t40356.0.html, that this program is not stable on XP, and I've found an even worse bug.

Try this:

1) take a P2P program like Frostwire, use it for some time so you have a lot of connections.
2) Now go to the firewall settings of CIS and select the option about port masking.
3) Select the option that will give you an alert for each occurring event.
4) Confirm this choice. You'll see that CIS has some trouble with this and that it hangs for some time. While this happens click with your mouse VERY FAST and multiple times on the cross in the upper right corner of this screen.
5) CIS cannot handle this and will crash, thereby destroying all its settings including those that come predefined with the program itself.

I've tested it on Windows XP and Windows Vista and I can reproduce it each time.

This is SO BAD!!!

[dchernyakov]

Do you mean  you Open stealth port wizard and selecting 'alert me to incoming connections, stealth my ports on a per-case basis'?

Then you click finish button and then the X button on the wizards window?

Do CIS create any crash-dumps? It should be in CIS installation folder with name CRASH.DMP

[mrahk]

Sorry, this is a very late reaction.


Yes it is about the stealth port wizard, but then you go wrong  :-)

You need to click the finish button and you'll notice that the program has difficulties with this so it freezes for a while. When this happens (so during the freeze) you click VERY FAST multiple times on the cross in the upper right corner of the screen.

And then see what happens.

In the mean time a new version of CIS has been released so I don't know what will happen now. I can't test it either since I've ditched CIS completely. On both Windows XP and Windows Vista it has to much issues and stupid errors so I just don't trust this program anymore.

[josedase]

   Who and why and in wich circumstances would reproduce what you made?

[HeffeD]

On both Windows XP and Windows Vista it has to much issues and stupid errors so I just don't trust this program anymore.

Perhaps you could report the stupid errors so they could get fixed?

And hopefully they aren't just because you're doing something stupid with the program.

[Dch48]

CIS is extremely stable on XP. I haven't had a single crash or error since installing it back when the version was 3.8. Who in the world would repeatedly click on the X like you're saying to do? Doing that in any program while it was trying to process something might crash it

[dchernyakov]

Hi
I think the main idea here is  "freeze" so does anyone else have any freese on using stealth port wizard with many connections established?

BTW, mshank, how many firewall rules is there is your network policy?

[Dch48]

I've never used the stealth ports wizard, I just let CIS detect my network and that was it. Shields up shows all my ports as stealthed.

[mrahk]

In the first place regarding most of your reactions, I don't care that much about what you think or what you do. I can only talk about my own configuration and if your configuration is different from mine it is likely that you experience different things. I'm a professional programmer / software tester so I know what I'm doing.

Since the start of this topic nearly a month passed with no reaction at all, and now I'm trying to work things out with moderator dchernyakov everyone is going to donate his/her two cents.
I guess that won't work too good, so if you've a relevant point of view please be welcome to write it down, but please don't write irrelevant reactions.

I know that it is highly unlikely that someone's going to click that cross numerous times during a freeze, but anyway when being frustrated one tries extreme things and so I did.
And on XP this program is not stable. It is currently a lot better than it used to be but updating is still trouble some and XP too suffers from the crash bug I'm talking about.

[at]dchernyakov:
I don't know exactly the number of firewall rules my network policy used to be.
P2P programs like uTorrent tend to make lots of different connections especially in that stealth port scenario. Furthermore I use some specialized programs for my work that make lots of connections.
I guess the number of firewall rules could be easily much more than 100.

[dchernyakov]

Thanks mrhank, we'll try to re-produce the issue.

[Kyle]

I've never used the stealth ports wizard, I just let CIS detect my network and that was it. Shields up shows all my ports as stealthed.

Most likely, GRC is testing your router.

[panic]

P2P programs like uTorrent tend to make lots of different connections especially in that stealth port scenario.

Having an excessive amount of global rules CAN introduce some slowdowns, particularly when applying a newly created rule. This build up of rules can happen if your torrent client is allowed to specify the quantity and ports used for incoming connections. This will result in, as you've pointed out, numerous global rules to cater for each port specified by your client.

To eliminate this, you can specify a specific port for incoming torrent connections and create a global rule that uses this nominated port. This one rule will satisfy your incoming torrent requirements, as the executable will only be listening on the one specified port. Downside to this method is that using just a single port can impede throughput.

I only mention this as a way to reduce the quantity of global rules.

Hope this helps
Ewen :-)

[Kyle]

  I've found that having CIS active at anytime during Torrents I experience less connections which in turn slows the speed, sometimes significantly. I've always assumed it was just the relation between p2p and firewalls which is not to a specific program.

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