Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit. Two days of configuration to get it tolerably configured and get my primary programs installed.
Had a problem with ZoneAlarm Free. Uninstalled and installed Comodo Firewall V3.0.16.whatever_was_up_yesterday.
After one hour, comodo started blocking access without prompting. Dug into it and gave things trusted application status. They were still denied permission to run.
So, found the uninstall directions, and followed them.
Now, I can’t access the control panel, many programs are still somehow being blocked, and yet I have no firewall protection.
Thankfully, I thought to make factory restore disks… because now I’m having to use them.
Pity this product’s free – At this point, I’d have found some pleasure in having to fight with someone to demand a refund.
I have already warned everyone on my ICQ and AIM lists never to touch a comodo product and will continue to spread the word.
Malware protection? … Comodo’s done the most damage of any program that’s ever been on one of my systems… and I have sandbox and honeypot systems I do virus research on. Wish it would have protected me from itself.
Ahroun, I’m very sorry you had terrible first experience with CFP.
Are you, by chance, using an IBM or Lenovo ThinkPad?
There have been reports of serious issues occuring when UAC is not temporarily disabled when installing CFP on a system running Vista. Also, it is imperative that all traces of a previous firewall or integrated security suite be removed before installing CFP.
If we had been given the opportunity to help you, we certainly would have done all we could.
However, I think it’s patently unfair that you are blaming all of your problems on CFP. The fact that you are conducting “virus research” on your machine leads me to believe that, possibly, one got loose without your knowledge. Condemning the product without giving Comodo’s support team a chance to analyze your problem isn’t fair.
If you change your mind, though, we’ll be here to give you a hand.
No, it’s an HP DV9730NR. As the UAC causes me no end of headaches and I frankly find the cost-benefit to security more cost-oriented, I disable UAC on Vista as a general rule. This is one reason quality security is of importance to me. I’m aware that ZA does not cleanly uninstall either so I followed the clean-up instructions for that program as well prior to attempting installing CFP.
This machine also plays no role in my virus research, it exists on an entirely separate network from my research network. The media I use for the research network are all brightly coloured and heavily marked with the biohazard symbol (I don’t know of anyone who’s come up with an equivalent icon for computer malware). At no time has any such media been introduced to this system. Also, I have anti-virus software that checks for updates on a daily basis, so the risk of this having been a cross-contamination scenario is as nil as it can be (granting that in statistics, true nil is rare).
The system had been clean-installed only two days ago, and only had a minimum of installed programs, just my core usage programs. I hadn’t yet gotten into heavy modifications. To have such a spectacular failure within hours of installing a program which over an hour increased from paranoia (which I initially appreciated – I am quite particular about my security) to locking me out of critical functionality is not something I consider adequate QA or formal programming – Don’t get me wrong, I’m not expecting LISP (or as my AI professors called it – Lots o’ Insane Stupid Parenthesis) and formal proofs, I rarely use the former and rarely do the later since I don’t write security software, but the capacity to lock me out of control panel and not have any apparent way to correct such a scenario?
On the flip side – I yield that I would even still prefer a user to tell me clearly his difficultly and allow me to research it. Soooo… to be fair… now that I’ve vented, ranted, and raved… I will give CFP a second chance on my freshly installed system, and I will see how it performs, and if it should fail, invoke the good ol’ Golden Rule, and show ya’ll the same courtesy I’d hope I’d be afforded were one of my packages to fail.
Thanks for your candid reply…this thread might get moved to another sub-forum (e.g. “Feedback”), but we’ll keep it going here for now.
I can empathize with the difficulty you had with removing the remnants of Zone Alarm. I had similar experiences with Norton products (specifically SystemWorks), but they eventually wised up and created a very comprehensive standalone installer. I feel that Comodo should do the same, and have expressed that several times in this forum.
I’m a bit handicapped in that I don’t run or use Vista. But I see enough complaints – in general – about UAC to wonder if the cost/benefit of that “feature” is worth the additional security it purportedly provides.
I think CFP’s programmers and developers would welcome a second chance to prove the value of CFP to you. Personally, I am beginning to see signs that CFP may evolve into an integrated “suite” with the addition of an AV scanner in the latest edition (v3.0.16.295). As I already run Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7, I hardly need another AV scanner to complement KAV. That is purely my own perspective, and not that of Comodo.
Keep us posted on your next installation, and don’t hesitate to ask for help here at the first sign of trouble.
Yeah, I noticed the integrated antivirus. It made me sigh.
I’m not an integrated software sorta guy. I prefer one task, one tool. Not really big on the monolithic design strategy nor the integration strategy.
However, operating on the assumption for now that my experience was abnormal to me and me alone, and it works as expected this time around, I suppose I won’t mind having integrated firewall and anti-virus. I DID like how paranoid it was (until the heuristics apparently decided I was the biggest security risk and locked me out, at least…)
I don’t know whether to gripe about the heuristics or give the designers the Turing Award. :SMLR
Well, the “We Try Harder” award might be appropriate, though the folks at Avis Rent-A-Car might have some say in the matter.
It’s not so much that I am diametrically opposed to the “suite” approach to security. But when you consider that, among the most seasoned and astute security professionals, the “layered” approach to security is probably the most practical. My definition of "layered security’ is a combination of software from different publishers. On the flip side, managing discrete applications is difficult enough, but now that I have KAV 7 and CFP working together – behind a Linksys Firewall/Router no less – I’m pretty happy with my setup.
As an aside, the description of what occurred on your affected system struck me as highly unusual. It is symptomatic of a horribly corrupted registry. Something went terribly wrong to block access to Control Panel.
In my case, security has become of supreme importance on this computer – it’s no longer behind a router or hardware firewall, and it is on a routeable IP. I intend to obtain something for it in the near future but right now… the wire that plugs into it is the internet itself. The only box I have simply isn’t configurable enough to use as a stateful pass-thru bridge… though I bet someone has a firmware variant for the Linksys WRT54G that would do so… hrms
Either way, I’m finally reinstalling Comodo… I’ve swept this thing as clean as clean can get, not even installed my core programs (will do that in installation and training mode). Fingers crossed.
Did you try a system restore to an earlier date before you installed the firewall?I understand what you feel because I had trouble with my internet connection after the installation of the most recent comodo but the previous one worked well,It seems that my internet connection was being blocked however sometimes we don’t need to give up something good so easily,perhaps try to find out why because it could happen to any software,but I would try the system restore tool before going farther,You probably know more about computers than I do but I was just wondering if you tried the system restore tool? Sometimes when a program has just been released there may be a few bugs to work on ,I had this happen with another application but within a few days the problem was corrected ,I would not give up on the program, it is a good one so feedback is the best way so that the problem can be corrected,it does not mean that the program is bad,remember computers have so many diferent software applications that it takes time to make some programs compatible with others,I had zonealarm too and I like that too,the only problem was it did not always uninstall everything but it is a good product,
Im sad to hear that some people have serious problems with cfp. You are not alone Ahroun (:SAD) Luckily Im one of those who never had any serious problems, not even with the alfa version
Good to hear you still have enough faith to reinstall it and possibly ruin things. I advise you to isntall cfp last. I mean first install all of your programs. With the new installation mode, it is not a difficult or annoying thing to install new software, but it is obviously easier if everithing is already installed. The default config of cfp is cleanpc mode. It will learn everything on your pc as everything is considered clean. (don’t worry, modified and newly introduced files will be regarded unsafe unless they are on the safelist)
And about the integrated scanner…it is only on-demand. It does not eat any resources. Only few additional MB’s on your hard drive for the black list. The scanner technology was already implemented in the firewall for safelisting pourposes. Btw I would find more usefull if I could initiate a scan instantly from the pop-up alert to help me decide about the file that fired it…Maybe in future releases.
ps: about installation mode…It is advisable that you first select ‘treat as: installer’ from the popup, whan it asks about the installer, this way you will be asked if you want to change to installation mode (sure you would like to). This will make the policy fully effective. If you already new this please discard the last sentence.
Seems like another good reason not to waste time with that waste of time known as Vista!
I have installed CFP on 2 PCs - one a dell laptop and the other a customised one, both running XP and Office 2003 with no such problems.
I did have problems with previous beta version, but this version is so sweet, powerful, flexible, thorough…I cannot praise it enough, espacially trying numerous other firewall over the years.
It is a shame that PCs and software still get such incompatability issues. The only apparent alternative seems to be to fork out a lot of money and buy a MAC which is designed and tested to be highly integrated between hardware, OS and the various programs that run on it.
(:SAD) Luckily Im one of those who never had any serious problems, not even with the alfa version 