I recently switched to Comodo Firewall Pro after hearing about it in some leak tests. However, I am having major problems. The firewall is preventing several applications from running at all. When on the “Custom” security setting applications such as Firefox and iTunes take several minutes to start. Other applications, such as Eclipse ANT integration, won’t start at all. All of these applications have rules that allow them to access the internet, though that really shouldn’t matter – they should still launch. When I switch the security settings to “Allow All” these applications work with no problems, but that defeats the purpose of having a firewall. Please help! What is stopping these applications from running?
Rand, welcome to the forum. Sorry to see you’ve been experiencing these problems.
The good news is that whenever the “Allow All” is set, it’s only a problem with your rules. Delete any blocked Application Monitor rules on svchost.exe. This is a vital Windows process that affects net connection. If you want to be sure, you can upload some screenshots or edited log.
I’ve been using Comodo for a month or so. Working great. This morning it blocked Firefox from accessing the internet. It shows in the application monitor as “allow”, but still denies it. When I turn off the application monitor, Firefox gets to the internet just fine.
It worked yesterday. It doesn’t work today. I didn’t knowingly do anything in between. So what’s changed?
I’m running XP-Home on the computer with the problem. On another computer with Win-98SE, Firefox continues to work properly.
Ron
“A picture is worth a thousand words.” - Napoleon Bonaparte
Rather than typing all the info out, it would be better if we can see a screenshot of your rules and logs.
Here’s screenshots of my rules, showing both the rules for Firefox and Java (from Eclipse).
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bgaydek/images/forumlink/CPF-ApplicationMonitor-Firefox.jpg
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bgaydek/images/forumlink/CPF-ApplicationMonitor-javaw.jpg
Turning off the application monitor does seem to fix the problem, so long as no other launches are pending. For example, if I launch Firefox and it doesn’t come up, then I turn off the application monitor, it will still take a while for Firefox to launch, and trying to launch it again won’t work either. However, if I turn off the application monitor first then everything works.
Thanks for the pics. Strange how there are no blocked app rules. Please upload a sample of your logs (edit out any private IP with a text editor like Notepad).
On a different note, I see a lot of allowed incoming TCP/UDP rules that shouldn’t be there. For example, Firefox doesn’t need any incoming connections (except for TCP loopback, which you should enable the option to skip its check in Security>Advanced>Misc>Config if you don’t run a proxy server).