Upgrade to v3 disastrous

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1

Because I’ve come to trust Comodo I did something I would never ordinarily do. I installed an upgrade immediately after it was released, and I didn’t thoroughly investigate it first.

Well, I’ve learnt my lesson (again). TRUST NO ONE - NO EXCEPTIONS.

I’ve never seen such a disastrous result after an installation, where the computer still booted up.

  • Quick start tray disappeared
  • System tray devoid of almost all applications that should be present
  • Almost no applications would start: “Not a Valid Win32 Application”
  • Repeatedly (I mean many dozens of times) asked to approve the same applications
  • CPU usage 100% so really couldn’t do anything
  • Couldn’t abort – couldn’t reboot.
  • After almost an hour of approving the same applications over and over again I powered off the machine
  • Still much the same after restart
  • Couldn’t uninstall Comodo

The only way I was able to recover was to boot into Safe Mode and run a restore that pre-dated the Comodo installation by a couple of hours. Which raises the question: Why does Comodo not create a Restore Point prior to installation? That’s a fundamental oversight.

  • Operating System: Windows XP SP2
  • Internet connection type: Cable
  • Logged in as: Administrator
  • Anti-Virus: AVG
  • Anti-Spyware: Webroot
  • Other Applications: About a billion. I’ll forward a Belarc Advisor report to support if they want. I don’t know of anything else that does such a comprehensive report for no money.
2

Any info you could give would be appreciated so the devs can get these issues fixed.

thanks,

jasper

3

Hey ive got similar problems have tryed to uninstall has removed from the add/remove list but is still in the system tray asking Enable On Access Scanner

Cheers

4

My experience was similar, with a few twists.
I originally installed version 3 via the update link provided by Comodo. This resulted in a system lock-up, and the inability to exit Windows XP pro gracefully. Upon re-boot, I tried to log in as a guest, but it only provided a blank screen, minus the taskbar, or desktop icons. After a cold start, I logged in successfully as an administrator, and restored the computer to a pre version 3 condition.

Thinking that the problem might be caused by a clash between Comodo, PC Tools Spyware Doctor, and / or SpySweeper, I removed both these applications, downloaded a fresh copy of Comodo 3, and installed it without any problems. In an attempt to prove my point I re-installed Spyware Doctor. To my great surprise, on the initial scan it reported several infections: Backdoor.Hackdoor, and 39 instances of Keenvalue. All these Trojans were attributed to Comodo, as witnessed by the logfile from Spyware Doctor.

I would like to think that this was simply a mis-identification by Spyware Doctor, and not actual Trojans.

Comodo appears to be working with these files removed, but I need to know what the story is behind these events. I am attaching the text version of my Spyware Doctor log file.

[attachment deleted by admin]

5

here are the temp fixes…

Hi Guys,

More than a million PCs is using CFP 3right now and the weird bugs/problems are posted in the help board.

2 of these problems seem to be recurring. Here are the temporary fixes until we update the executables:

1 - cmdagent.exe 100% CPU consumption:

This has been verified and fixed with the upcoming update. It is related to patched uxtheme.dll.
However, until the updates are issued the temporary fix is disabling the registry protection :

  • Defense±>Advanced->Defense+ Settings->Monitor Settings
  • Uncheck “Protected Registry Keys”
  • Press Apply and restart

2 - System Slowdown issue :
It is related to the load on comodo lookup servers.

Online file lookup must be disabled

  • Miscellaneous->Settings->Update
  • Uncheck “Automatically perform an online lookup for the unrecognized files” option
  • Press Apply button

Both 1 & 2 should solve the most of the problems.

3 - Email client problems

  • Firewall->Tasks->Stealth Ports Wizard
  • Select “Alert me to incoming connections”

Then Protocol analysis should be disabled.

  • Firewall->Advanced->Attack Detection Settings->Miscellanous
  • Uncheck “Do protocol analysis” option

Thank you all for the cooperation,

Egemen

6

They are all false alerts. Those files belong to encrypted safe application database.

Egemen

7

Thanks for that info. The files were removed by Spyware Doctor at the time of the scan. How will that effect the performance of Comodo 3? Should I remove the firewall, and re-install it to restore those files?
Thanks: Laz

8

Hi there, I upgraded to Firewall version 3 via the Comodo pop up yesterday. Everything seemed to work ok afterwards except for a message saying ‘On access is off’. This reffered to the Comodo anti virus. When i tried to turn ‘on access’ on it said ‘failed to turn on’. No wishing to be vulnerable I did a system restore to get rid of the upgrade. I like Comodo and will use it if it is safe and until it does not mess up the anti virus settings. Any ideas?

Dsteeley

9

You should define any security software as “Trusted Application” in Defense+.

10

Thanks Japo. I’ll try that.

Dsteeley

11

It wont affect the performance or the security. But CFP may not recognize some applications in this case.

It is upto you. You can reinstall or keep it as it is. Nothing to worry about.

E

12

i had a few bad results with V3 and uninstalled, but decided to keep with V3 and work through it instead of giving up, the more problems are found and reported… the better the software will become in future updates

13

Melih, with all due respect, the number of people apparently successfully using version 3 is largely irrelevant to the many of us who are having problems ranging from minor to catastrophic.

While I have no doubt at all that your team are working at full speed to resolve all issues, I’m inclined to think, given the apparent diversity of problems reported, that it’s not going to happen overnight. So it would seem to me that the best “temp fix” is to stay with, or revert to, the previous version which ran fine for all of us. That’s what I have done, and I can now get on with my work care-free while you guys get on with solving the problems.

Comodo Firewall has for some time been a recommendation to my list of readers, so the moment I recovered my system I sent a warning to them not to upgrade to v3, and explaining how to recover to a prior Restore Point if they were already In trouble. While it’s unfortunate that Comodo v3 does not create a Restore Point prior to installation, everyone should have at least a daily Restore Point (unless they have foolishly turned it off), so at worst they should be less than a few hours out of date.

The feedback I have had from my list pretty much mirrors the experiences related here on your board, ranging from no apparent problems to “computer virtually unusable”.

In extreme cases, and I certainly experienced one of those, it would not be possible to implement any of your three recommendations.

As I said in my initiating post above, I am happy to provide your support people with a Belarc Advisor report which will list all of the applications installed on this particular unit (a very large number), but I won’t post the report publicly. If you think it will help please advise where I should send it. This should be of much more help to you than me trying to isolate and “work through” the problems one-by-one, which I really don’t have time for anyway.

For everyone: Belarc Advisor is a free application that will compile a report containing all of your installed software and much else besides. Get it from here: Belarc Advisor - Belarc, Inc.

Please don’t interpret his post as being derogatory – I’m a Comodo fan and have every confidence that all these problems will be solved.

Best regards,

  • Bill Hely
14

This is the spirit that benefits the millions of users worldwide!!!

hats off to you Rickyg73!

Melih

15

Well of the people I know, none of them have had problems about CFP’s doing what it wasn’t supposed to do. Of course the people who do experience problems are posting intensively and it’s good that they’re getting heard. Perhaps this could have been a release candidate since some of the posted problems look real bugs not configuration issues. But still CFP is working fine for a lot of people… let’s hope the next version works for everybody.

16

Hi

I installed v3.0 I found some glitches and flaws :

1.- the GUI, it consumes a lot of RAM and sometimes freezes
2.- at Startup it does not load appears 2 dialog boxes telling that it won’t load an *.ico, don’t remember wich one is because I didn’t pay much attention but refers to the interface and the next dialog box refers to a cfpres.dll. But I found a workaround. Click the icon to open the program go to Miscellaneous->Diagnostics and the problem is solved
3.-The other thing it’s that +Defense set at Clean PC slows performance and takes a long to resume functionality.
4.- When I move from My Pending Files a lot of files for instance a folder (VB 2005 Programs) to My Own Safe Files it appears me a lot of annoying pop ups that can’t move the non executables files, it could only bypass them
5.- What’s the differences (read point 4) between Remove and Purge it confuses me
6.- But I will continue using this product I want to colaborate to improve it posting messages

(B) (L)

17

Workarounds

1.- Configure +Defense to Training Mode (Uses less memory), so that the interface doesn’t freeze
2.- I you use Counterspy as I read in other topic, it is only a false alarm the HackTool.Rootkit (ffffhhhewwwww!!!)

Improve the help section of My Pending Files between options Purge and Remove (What’s their difference)

And I want to acknowledge to Melih for the product anyway it’s flaws, I hope all of you read my posts, for the greater good of ourselves

(B) (V)

18

Well the problem is the people who are having problem with this would not have installed it with RC (cos if they did, then we would have caught all this anyway with the last RC). When a product goes into a release you are bound to get more bugs as it is used by many more people than RC version.

Melih

19

(:CLP)I’ve been using CFP for a few months because after reading/researching different Firewall programs CFP was simply the best to me hands down …Now I’m in the group that had major problems with slowness in CFP 3.0 and it took me 3 hours to finally un-install re-install even after this issue I can’t wait for patched version of CFP 3.0 …hang in there everyone Comodo will take care of the issue

20

Hi :

I don’t know how to say it but today I downgraded COMODO to version 2.4 because v.3.0 still had a lot of bugs (too much resources), and the parallel configuration of the firewall plus Defense+ and the what really made me took the decision was the PCLeakFlankTest it surprisingly failed, and the annoying false positive HackTool.Rootkit with Counterspy, so I better wait till the next build, but as I said before I like the product, it could have been less complex like the 2.4 version, but I will keep using COMODO firewall and I hope that the problems will get solved for the sake of us the users and thanks again to Melih to give us the opportunity to be very involved with us, the users.

For the next build it would be very good to get rid of the categorization of the programs I mean (Installer/Updater, FTP, Browser, Windows System Application, etc), because a program simple i’t’s code and indeed is confusing, so I think something like a 3.4 version, the improved engine of version with the simplicity of version 2.4, ahhh and also of the My Own Safe Files, etc, etc

(V) (B)