I’m using CIS 5.9 on Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit.
The story goes like this.
I’m using Safe Mode for Defense+ and Custom Policy for Firewall.
All the while it was working fine and nice. But one day (in fact, just a few days ago), it started alerting me and asking me for permission regarding things that shouldn’t even have popped up!
For example, I use XnView to view animated GIF files. I double-clicked on a GIF file and Defense+ alerted me saying that explorer.exe is trying to open xnview.exe, which is ridiculous because explorer.exe is trusted (and I’m on Safe Mode, so that confused me even more), and xnview.exe is something I’ve already allowed and remember-my-answer-ed.
All of my other previously allowed applications and even Windows’ files could cause Defense+ to alert me.
Later on, I looked into the Defense+ Computer Security Policy, and discovered that the entire bunch of files under the categories of “Windows System Applications”, “Windows Updater Applications”, “COMODO Internet Security”, “All Application”, as well as the line “%windir%\explorer.exe” are all missing!! Certain previously allowed programs are also missing.
In addition, some allowed programs have repeated rules (because Defense+ asked me again and I selected “Remember my answer” again), so I think Defense+ ignored the rules.
Not long after, less than half a day, my Windows 7 could not start anymore. After turning on my computer, and the BIOS did all its stuff, it stuck there at the line “Verifying DMI Pool…” or something, and nothing loaded anymore.
I’m now on another Windows 7 of my system. (I have 3 Windows 7 installed separately in 3 hard drives.)
I couldn’t figure out why this happened, because I wasn’t doing anything weird or out of normal. I was only using my computer normally, and my Avira antivirus didn’t catch anything funny, nor did COMODO Firewall and Defense+. (I disabled CAV.)
Please enlighten me. In the worst case, I may have to reinstall my Windows 7 from scratch, but I don’t want the same thing to happen again so I need to know what caused this.
Thanks.