Hi there,
well, I’ve just installed the comodo firewall and, first I was so happy with it. But now, it very often happens, that it says to me, that an application, for example OpenOffice wants to connect an invisible connection to the internet using the firefox (at least there’s the firefox icon on the message).
So I deny it but then I can’t surf anymore unless I switch the firewall off.
Can you help me?
Welcome to the forum HaraldM,
If you are using version 2.4 of the firewall then this is the nature of the beast. What happens is, and I don’t know why, that whatever is the last application or current application that connected to the internet then any other application that tries to connect will try to go thru that previous or current application that was/is connected.
There have been quite a few threads discussing this and it has to do with Windows OLE supposedly. OLE allows one application the ability to use another application to do what it needs to do. That’s a fairly simple explanation but I am not a programmer so I don’t know the ins and outs of the actual workings.
When you block OO from connecting then you also are blocking the FF connection too. If I remember correctly everyone in the other threads wanted a way to stop OO before it reached FF so that it wouldn’t kill the main connection.
hope this helps,
jasper
Well, you’re telling me that it is not possible to stop one program before the other? Hm, this makes the whole firewall worse.
Hope there will be an update.
I’m testing the beta of CFP3 so I can’t remember if you can go into Application Monitor and block them from there or not. You might try that to see if it is possible. You could also go to the program trying to update and stop it from doing Auto Updates from inside the program. As far as I know the OLE issue was never resolved once the program asked for access to the connection. You either have to allow it or the connection gets blocked.
If you are able to update to CFP3 once it is released then it does a much better job of allowing control of your programs. CFP3 will only work on XP/Vista–32 and 64 bit versions though and not any other OS’s such as 95/98/2000/2003.
jasper
Well I hope I will be able to get the 3rd version of the firewall. Will there be an update? And will it also be free? Then - of course :SMLR
But when will it be published?
Just remember that CFP3 is still in beta and it does have bugs in it that can cause your system to possibly crash. If you don’t want to go thru that then you might check back later to see how the next release is coming along as far as bugs go and then install that version.
It will always be free of course according to Melih. No bait and switch with Comodo. Full versions for free.
One other thing, I wanted to test program control on CFP3 beta since that is what you are mainly interested in. Adobe Reader popped up to access the internet thru my browser connection and I blocked it. My connection stayed intact and the program did not update. A little later it popped up again and I allowed it and it updated just fine. That should answer your questions about program control with the new firewall.
I think you will be very pleased with CFP3 as it is much improved.
jasper
Thanks for the explanation Jasper, that had been puzzling me for some time.
I use Open Office too and found blocking it lost the internet connection to Firefox.
I suppose there’s no real harm, at the end of the day, letting OO look for updates; some could be useful. 
Mike.
CFP3 does a much better job of letting you control what goes out. Granted CFP3 still has bugs but the overall design is quite a bit more flexible when it comes to controlling what you want to let out and not let out.
I still say the best place to stop a program from updating, if that is what you want to do, is within the program itself. If you then get a popup about the program updating from the firewall then you know something is wrong.
jasper
You mean M$ cough WMP end of cough
I’ll use my famous analogy here. Stopping M$ programs from running rampant is like herding cats. Course I’ve been told that it can be done using a squirt gun. ;D
jasper