Let me start by saying I’m really thankful for this program. I first heard of Comodo in reference to an independent test that rated its firewall well above the one I’ve been paying major bucks for, and been progressively more disappointed with (particularly with regards tech support).
I’ve seen several messages here with regards the baffling update progress indicator that freezes at 30% regardless of how much downloading is left to do. I did eventually discover on my own that the program wasn’t hanging, but for such a sophisticated and highly-regarded suite to have such a completely useless indication is utterly unfathomable.
This was never so bad as the most recent update I did, which seems to have clocked in at a mammoth 100+MB… and for some reason seems to have had to download in its entirety twice on two separate machines(?!)
I suppose if you’re on a seriously high-bandwidth connection, this whole issue might seem like a tempest in a teapot. I’m only on a moderately fast connection (rural satellite) and aside from so-so basic bandwidth, I have to contend with being throttled by my provider if I rudely consume bags of bandwidth during peak hours. Thus I routinely try to schedule major downloads early in the morning, when I get full subscribed bandwidth (or sometimes even a tad better) and do not get throttled back.
All this adds up to a scenario in which it is extremely inconvenient to have a useless progress indicator. Yes, I can open the traffic dialog and see that stuff is still happening, but I’ve no idea of how much more stuff remains.
To make matters worse I have 3 machines to maintain… plus 4 more that I move physically to my house from time to time, then put them back in the broke-*ss rural computer lab I voluntarily take care of, where they share a single 40kbps dial-up(!!!)
So is it possible to download signatures once and distribute them to other machines (as I once used to do with McAfee) or am I obliged to let each one communicate directly with the mothership?
Despite many threads in the wishlist forum asking for more control over update downloads, including redistribution, I have yet to see any action from Comodo. It is clear to me that Comodo developers do not understand or do not care. They assume that most potential users have fast unmetered broadband, and anyone else is just unimportant.
Comodo is working very ■■■■■■■ the upcoming v4. We can expect a beta towards the end of year. It will bring a lot of usability changes among other things. For now I can only hope those wishes are going to be granted in version 4.
For now all we can do work around it. One solution is to manually copy the bases.cav from the one computer to the other one. This canonly be done with Defense + deactivated. It can easily be deactivated using the right click options of the systray. Don’t forget to enable D+ again as Comodo will not alert every 15 minutes or so.
When you have a LAN you update the other computers through your main computer (that will save time and bandwidth). According to the help file:
If you are connected to a local network and the CIS program updates are available any of the other computers in your network, you can type the IP address of the host in this text box. CIS will automatically check the host specified here and download the updates from the host even when you are offline.
It’s been a long time since I posted. I took a quick shot at a manual copy of bases.cav but I didn’t realize there’s more than one so it didn’t work. Then… life happened for a while. Anyway I finally got another chance to check this out and was able to make the manual copy thing work, though to replace the bases.cav in scanners I had to reboot in safe mode. Turning off D+ and even quitting the application wasn’t sufficient to gain me access to the pre-existing version.
I also took a shot at the updating over the LAN concept but wasn’t successful. That would be both slick and ideal. (I haven’t given up, though I wonder if I need more details.)
In any case if this becomes slicker in v4 I would be one very grateful dude (even moreso than I am now, and I AM). If I had a solution like that, along with autopatcher to handle Windows updates, I could leave all those the machines in the little rural computer lab in place and just drive over with all the updates I need to keep them happy. That would be sweet. Desktop computers with CRT monitors are not the most portable of devices.
I now have five machines at home, and being off the grid on solar power with (as mentioned) a pseudo-highspeed connection, having to update all machines independently has consequences in time and photons.
So thanks again, sorry I disappeared after posting initially. You may not see this reply but maybe someone else searching for clues will in the future.
