Comodo Firewall is an amazing product that beats almost all the paid firewalls I’ve used. However, the recent update to version 3 caused some minor inconveniences.
First of all, the boot up time is slowed down by at least 5 times. Comodo Personal Firewall 2 started up virtually instantly when the computer is booted up. However, Comodo Firewall Pro 3 takes about 30 seconds to 1 minute to start up. I am very picky about startup times, which is why I keep my startup entries virtually empty. Comodo firewall and antivirus are basically what forms my startup list.
I noticed that after Comodo Firewall Pro was installed, there was an additional dll file that is initiated with Windows called “guard32”. It does not seem to have a company name, unlike monln which is labeled COMODO Inc. I also had another dll file, which had no name and was pointing to an inexistent directory. I monitored the Comodo Firewall installation so I know that this was created during the installation of Comodo Firewall Pro. I deleted it because it served no use as it was pointing to something that isn’t there. However, is this a bug, or intentional? And any recommendations on speeding up Comodo Firewall Pro? It doesn’t hog any resources when it’s being used, and is quite fast to call up when it’s in the taskbar. But the startup times are worse than Zone Alarm. I hope this is a bug or something that can be fixed.
I am using Windows XP with SP2. There have been no other problems with Comodo Firewall 2.
Anyone else experiencing a slow startup after upgrading?
One symptom for this behavior is either having Terminal Services removed or disabled. Check the status of that service by executing C:\WINDOWS\system32\services.msc and look for Terminal Services.
The TS problem was supposed have been fixed in RC1, but the bug patch either did not work or the fix never made it into the RC or Final.
I have the same problem. On my laptop it lasts even 5 minutes (!) (timed with stop watch) from successful logon until the system starts to load the taskbar and everything else. With version 2 it started to load immediately after successful logon.
There is even another anoying thing:
If you do not log in immediately after the logon screen showed up, after a certain amount of time you are not able to type anything. The keyboard is totally blocked. The mouse works anyway but it cannot click on any button since everything seems to be frozen.
By the way I use GData AntiVirus Version 6. Since I cannot configure it (preinstalled client version) to allow every acces caused by files of Comodo Firewall Pro I cannot state anything about the behaviour of my anti virus software.
Configuring Version 3 not to start with Windows does not increase the start up - the amount of time to load and problems with the keyboard are the same.
Only uninstalling of Comodo erases the problem.
All in all this should be fixed soon, it is horrible! (Compared to Version 2 Version 3 is an excellent piece of work nevertheless.)
Having read good things about CFP in the past, I wanted to install it on my new laptop and opted to be informed when it became available for Vista (never got the email!). So, when I saw yesterday that it was available, I immediately installed it (after disabling Windows Firewall which I’d used while I waited for CFP3’s release).
Installation went fine but now I have similar problems to the above.
My Windows boot up time has dramatically increased from around 30 seconds to desktop to over 5 minutes most times. Approximately 1 time in 5 it will boot up almost as fast as it used to. On the other occasions it will go from the Windows progress bar animation to a black screen with the mouse arrow (which I can move around the screen normally) before finally reaching the desktop. It then takes 30-60 seconds to show the taskbar (previously 5-10 seconds at most). Very frustrating!
Now and again I also find the system tray/notification area icon I missing when I boot up and cannot bring up the CFP window, even by using the start menu. In fact, I just right clicked the icon a second ago and it disappeared! :-\ Although on this occasion, it was possible to use the start menu to access the program.
I will persevere with CFP or now as I want to see how it compares with Norton (which I ditched on my XP desktop PCs some time ago) and ZoneAlarm which I currently run on them. It’s a bit fiddly right now with all the notifications I’m getting (often several for each program) but I hope it will settle down once it has learned most of them.
But the main clincher will be if the two bugs above are sorted, and how quickly.
Laptop info:
Sony N31S/W
Intel Core 2 Duo T5500, 1.66GHz
1GB RAM
Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit
avast! anti virus Home Edition 4.7
Spybot Search & Destroy 1.4
Spyware Doctor 5.0.5.259
Windows Defender
Same here. Defense + disabled but still, the boot-time varies from 20 secons up tp 2 minutes before I can logon. My OS is Vista Home Premium 32-Bit. PC: Quadcore, 3GB memory, S-ATA II drives.
Windows starts up as usual until the screen turns black and the mouse cursor appears. Sometimes, I cannot even move the cursor. After some while, I can logon. I recognized that the harddisk seems to be very busy before the logon appears.
I had Avast virus installed and after reading about some problems, I deinstalled it and use NOD32 now but still the same problem.
This is really annoying and I’m thinking about deinstalling Comodo and using the Vista Firewall for the time beeing or Zonealarm :-\ until a well working firewall is available for Vista.