Hi, I just spent some fruitless hours trying to resolve an issue with email attachments in Outlook Express on an XP PC protected by Comodo. With one email account, attempts to Open an attachment give the error message “Windows cannot access the specified device, path or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item”. The weird thing is that I can Save the attachment to to another folder, so I do have access to the item. Other email account’s attachments behave normally. One hypothesis I’m working on is that Comodo has done something to ‘isolate’ an attachment for this account which has affected the link to file type and the default application to open it. Is this too out there or have I missed something obvious (I did check the accounts attachment folders permissions)? Your insights / wisdom / wit would be much appreciated. Many Thanks, krvt.
Hi krvt & welcome to the forum.
Most likely the issue does not relate to Comodo.
At the same time you are not providing any info about the System Environment … OS / platform/ the version & components of Comodo installed – nothing
That makes it difficult to pinpoint the problem irrespectively
Then, what is a nature of the attachments?
Are those – executables that you want to run just by double-clicking … that’s dangerous in any case
Then , speaking about the lack of information
Do you have Internet Explorer Enhanced Security component installed ?
If so - Add/Remove windows components, then uninstall the said component) and you will not have that System (stressing!) Error, which has nothing to do with Comodo
If that’s XP most likely it is just indeed a “permissions problem “, not a Comodo again,… but without info we may just guess
(this is not a guessing business - information needed)
What happens if you would disable any Comodo’s real-times ?
Most likely you will experience the same issue, as far as I can tell
There are many other circumstances when the said Error can occur – none of them even remotely related neither to Comodo nor to any other security in place
If you are suspecting some “isolation” by Comodo, which is extremely doubtful
- please tell if you ever had any Alert(s) related to OE? If so - that should be your choice
- look at the respective Rules . Most likely you will not find them, but anyway
So mainly please provide more detailed information
My regards
Thanks for your reply Siberlynx. It’s appreciated.
To answer some (it’s a friends PC so I’ll need to visit it again to answer all) of your questions:
OS = XP (on an NTFS hard disk) the most recent release at that date. I checked for the latest as part of my attempt at resolving it; as I did with Comodo which was just the Free download version installed. I ran a fresh scan with Comodo.
The attachments where pdfs, word docs and docxs, an Excel file , and an exe.
Not sure about Internet Explorer Enhanced Security options, but will check. I didn’t explore this type of path as I’d presume that this would affect all of the email accounts not just one and I’m not aware of any direct connection between IE and OE that would relate to just one email account.
I did disable Comodo without any effect.
I did check the folders and files permissions, all OK. And I could save the attachments to another folder, hence my distrust of the error message.
As I said, in my first post its only one email account, the others work fine. So I’m looking for a specific reason one account should behave this way.
My main suspect is that some form of malware had snuck in to just that email account in the gap between the malware’s birth and the reaction to it. And the malware broke the link between the attachments file types and application.
I was/am hoping that someone may have experienced the same symptoms in any versions of XP and Outlook Express and/or Comodo and could point me to the specific malware. My friend couldn’t tell me when the symptoms started so it could be any of the releases of the softwares in the last year.
And if it is indeed a malware problem then Comodo would be aware of, or, interested in following it through.
Are you saying that you have aware [ “many other circumstances when the said Error can occur” ] of this problem with just one email account misbehaving. Or are you saying that there are many reasons why the Windows error msg appears?
Thanks again. I’ll get back when I get more details.
PS. Seasons Greetings