Upgrade to v3 disastrous

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21

i am also absolutely disappointed about the V3 and will deinstall it right now.

Million options in Defense+, but no intelligent protection - the result is no protection. Other firewalls are analysing e.g. dangerous global hooks , Comodo still offers to allow all or nothing of these and the most crazy thing: in the custom installation everything is allowed as long as it is already on the computer or a hard disk, means Comodo shows me happily Defense+ is learning a global hook - unbelievable.

The next totally crazy thing is that there is no option to define a rule with different ports and different IPs at the same time: all IPs or all Ports need a extra rule as long as it is no range - crazy.

In V2.4 the additional rules were automatically deleted if I created a new rule which included other ones. In V3 all these (not used) rules still remain.

The safelist in Defense+ is absolutely silly and a horror for privacy. It logs all files I ever access and all users sitting on the computer can monitor my computer-use when they look at the safelist. Why on earth is there no possibility just to check ALL files (no matter if internet or hard drive) for dangerous behaviour???

The “core” of the CPF might be okay and good and maybe CPF has a high protection level at all, but its absolutely useless when the otions and the menus etc are totally confusing the users.

Why isnt there a options-UI like Kaspersky or Outpost, with nice beautiful understandable windows to configure firewall-rules and the defense+ analyses the access for me and decide by itself whats dangerous and whats not ???

What on earth is the sense of activating registry monitoring and then million of registry access windows appears and only 0,0001% of all CPF users know which registry entry is ok and whats not ?

The most funny thing is the standard rule with allowing defense+ all access as long its local saved. Never seen such a crazy option.

I am absolutely speakless about that product.

22

If you are worried about people seeing your safe list you can password protect Comodo in the Miscellaneous > Settings > Parental Control.

23

Since installing and using Comodo Pro v2.4 on recommendation in Scot’s Newsletter, I have been very satisfied with it, hence when the announcement came in yesterday of v3.0, I put immediate trust in the new s/w to be even better!) and immediately installed it.

However, my PC system (XP SP2 on a new Lenovo with 1GB RAM) thereupon slowed to almost a complete standstill (100% CPU!) and I got lots of system rejects telling me that previously normal applications were not recognisable as win32 software. Even the uninstall programme for Comodo Pro 3.0 was rejected!

After several hours of waiting for pop-up windows taking 5-10 minutes to build up their display, then asking me to confirm some totally unknown pgm name or other as ‘authorised’, and getting responses 10 minutes or so after clicking the cursor on something or other, I gave up in despair. As I said above, I could not even uninstall the new firewall!

Fortunately, I had installed an external hard disk with Acronis s/w on the new computer, configured to be able to do backups/restores of my whole ‘C’ drive, so I have been able to restore the previous set-up. Although this has been a traumatic experience, I must say that in view of the excellent performance of, and experience with, v2.4, I shall stick with Comodo Pro firewalls and trust you to get the new version running just as cleanly as the previous one. I am sure that you will, but how will we know that we can be sure that any bugs are REALLY fixed? would it be possible for you to contact, say Scot’s Newsletter to get an independent test done and confirmation published of the bug-fixing? Scot is a big fan of Comodo! And by the way: if we MUST uninstall any earlier Comodo version before downloading the new one, please make that absolutely explicit in your installation instructions, otherwise users may assume that an upgrade is going on where a conflict may be coming into being.

Finally, based on my own experience, I very much recommend backup/restore installations to anyone who needs to keep ANY data really safe! The once-off installation costs are a good insurance premium, believe me.

Many thanks for your hard work and otherwise very good s/w; for keeping it free!; and as a former s/w developer I wish you every success with the debugging of v.3.

24

The clean PC mode is completely safe as long as the computer was clean before installing CFP, and it looks to me a very satisfactory compromise between safety and ease of use. Any setting more restrictive than clean PC mode will be overwhelming to the average user. But everything depends on how you configure it, if you don’t want that you can switch to train with safe or even paranoid. But even in clean PC mode you can define policies to protect, for example, Windows’ and trusted apps from global hooks etc. by even safe apps other than Windows’ or trusted. Sorry but if you’re saying that CFP is all or nothing with no control, it seems to me that you don’t know its capabilities at all.

25

I had something similar to happen.

I upgraded to v3 from the update alert in v2.4.

For the first day or two, everything was pretty much peachy. I did have a lot of pop-up alerts, and I noticed that my start menu was slow coming up. However, I figured this was a bug that would be fixed in a future update, so I wasn’t too worried.

Then, today, the bottom dropped out.

I was printing a web page to a PDF file. I accidentally answered the security pop-up incorrectly (I changed it to something else from Installer/Updater category). This caused all PDF file access to result in the “not a valid win32 application” error pop-up. Thinking something had just crashed, I rebooted my machine.

Major mistake.

Once it came back up, every icon and link on my computer to any type of file reported the “not a valid win32 application” error. I couldn’t run the firewall GUI, and I couldn’t access any menus beyond the START Button menu. I even got a message that I didn’t have permissions to shut down the computer. Trying to access the Manage menu from MY Computer resulted in “null” boxes popping up.

(This issue appeared in all three user accounts on the machine, including the two of which have full administrator permissions).

Eventually, I discovered I could restart the computer from Task Manager. I booted to safe mode and managed to restore my most recent saved system restore point (the restore point I used was after verson 3 was installed, but was from the day before I had this problem). This fixed the issue and allowed me to uninstall the firewall software (sorry to say, but this was my first action once everything was working again. I depend too much on this particular machine to take a chance it might happen again and not be fixable next time…).

I’m going to downgrade back to version 2.4 until some bugs have been fixed. I have always recommended Comodo firewall to anyone who asked what software to use (and I’ll continue to recommend version 2.4, because it is a great piece of software), but I can’t in good conscience recommend v3 to anyone at this time.

26

(B) (L)

I think that the all problem that the new version is bloated with features that are confusing, and here we are no to boycott the version in itself but take in consideration some aspects

1.- Regardless the experience of the user (I’m a IT) and I think to have some experience with firewalls (ZA Internet Suite, Kerio, Kaspersky Internet Suite, we the users want simplicity and effectiveness (v. 2.4), the core of version 3 is good but the program has to much features that I found to redundant (the mistake that did Zone Alarm Internet Suite with his OS protection -too many pop up’s

2.- I spent 3 days trying to understand the version 3 but I also want to use my PC to do other jobs…

3.- all here in the forums are giving their experiences not to boycott the product, but to improve it

4.- For that reason some one of us reinstalled v 2.4, it would be very disloyal to move to other firewall

5.- In both versions the RAM needed are 64 MB, but you see the differences
(V)

27

I re-installed Comodo’s missing files that were removed by Spyware Doctor based on the information you gave me. The firewall has been working just great after the initial installation hassles. The firewall passed all the tests administered by PC Flank, and Shields Up. I think you’ll be in for another great review by Matousec, et all.

Thanks for the great job.

28

Are the XP users experiencing significantly more RAM usage than those of us using Vista? I am currently using 7.5MB and that is about as high as it gets (cpf.exe + cmdagent.exe)? I have seen other references to high resource usage, but certainly doesn’t happen with Vista Ultimate.

29

Hi sded,

I’m using winxp and mine is (cfp = 4,912k & cmdagent.exe = 8,200k) coughs how much is that in mb? umm I’m rusty but is it 13.1mb for mine? if not can you tell me :slight_smile:

30

What the hell, here again with v 3.0, I couldn’t stand up it’s absence, so here again…I reinstalled but I downloaded from Clean PC to Training Mode

(B) (L)

31

WARNING WITH MATOUSEC TESTS

Yesterday I tried to download the All in One Test Package, but in the middle of de process Avast! warned that the zip file had a virus… I don’t remember it’s name…

So be carefull about www.matousec.com

32

v3.0 is a peice of garbage, consant lock-ups, slow downs & not to mention it’s overbloated. I find if a program tries to do too much it often fails, that’s why I stopped using ZA. Since switching back to 2.4 all my problems have disapeared, v3.0 should have been called a beta.

33

Those are false positives.

Why? Because you ARE downloading code that will challenge the functionality of your firewall and, unintentionally, your anti-virus application. Avast is simply responding as it should.

Matousec is a respected security site, so you can run those tests without fear of infecting your system.

34

Why were you not testing it when it was called Beta for 6 months?

Cos if you were, then we could have found these bugs that caused you to call it a garbage and ironed it all out!!!

Melih

35

^^^
My thoughts exactly.

As a former user of Sygate Firewall and, more recently, Outpost Firewall, I gave serious consideration to Jetico because their product architecture was sound and did consistently well in nearly all of the established firewall leak tests.

But I selected Comodo after experiencing difficulty in understanding Jetico’s logic behind its ruleset structure and hierarchy. More so, the user interface left a lot to be desired. Eventually, Jetico may establish itself as an excellent firewall. After all, it does have a large following.

What some posters in this forum refuse to acknowledge is that CFP 3.0 represents what might be best described as a quantum leap in the product’s ongoing development. I say this, despite the fact that I never participated in any Comodo product testing. I used Comodo 2.4.18.184 Final for a mere two weeks before migrating to v3.0. I was that convinced of the product’s quality and functionality. I upgraded, knowing that there would probably be some problems. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

We should really dispense with the semantics (e.g. “Is 3.0.13.268 a beta version?”) – and the childish bickering – and instead devote our time to submitting useful bug reports and assisting the programmers with our input on the new version’s behavior under a multitude of PC configurations.

Right now, I’d be willing to pay $40 for a good firewall that offers innovative features and is supported by a very hard-working team of programmers, developers and forum members/users.

Guess what? I don’t have to pay $40.

Despite the issues I’m experiencing with CFP 3.0, I’m pretty happy. And I’m convinced that the first two bug-fix updates are going help resolve a lot of the issues reported in this forum.

36

Very WISE
Very LOGICAL
Very HELPFUL
Very PRACTICAL

And the Beneficiaries are every single user out there!! Because with A company like Comodo and Users like USSS noone can stand in our way to create world’s best security products!!!

I sincerely thank you USSS!

Melih

37

I too had issues installing v3, and I’ve gotten little to no support on those issues.

One of my biggest annoyances with the installer itself was that, despite telling it not to install Defense+, it still installed Defense+ items. When I rebooted my computer, Defense+ was detecting and learning things, yet I told the installer not to install Defense+. All I told the installer to install was the firewall. Seeing Defense+ get installed was quite a nuisance.

My server computer upgraded from 2.4 to v3 without any issues. Though I also told the installer not to install anything Defense+ related, but it still extracted and installed it. Defense+ was disabled, though I believe if you opt-out of having something installed, nothing relating to it should be installed.

Relating to support, an issue I had with 2.4 was put off week after week for over a month. They simply stalled until v3 came out by saying “We are looking into this issue”, and then said to upgrade to v3. That’s not fixing an issue, that’s avoiding it. If this is the kind of support users have to look forward to when they need help relating to Comodo products, I’m going to stop recommending them and find alternatives to recommend.

38

Just reporting my finds…had many of the same issues with v3 as others…

slowing of the pc

blocking my connection(closing everything and restrting firefox fixed that) then it started
locking up(especially if more than two windows were open at once–if it wasn’t locking up then it was creating an issue with firefox that shut it down)

asking permission for the same things over and over(checked this numerous times and for some reason it remained on ask instead of changing to allow…the box was checked to remember)

The locking up was my main issue the rest I could deal with as CFP is definitely a must have (R)…since I work on my pc and it’s a busy time of the year I went back to v2.4 for now.

Will try v3 again once work slows down…

BTW…the temp fixes did not work for me either :frowning:

39

It’s indeed unfortunate that your support requests were ignored or not handled in a timely manner. I’m sure there are plenty of other users in the same boat with you. I installed CFP 2.4 Final on two systems just a few weeks ago. Had I had more experience working with the product (I did not participate in beta testing), I would have tried to help you in any way.

What we’ve witnessed the past 10 days or so is an overwhelming, exponential increase in the number of users installing/upgrading to CFP 3.0. As such, I think Comodo’s support staff was caught off guard, and I truly hope they’ve learned a lesson or two from this.

By the same token, the company did not become what it is today by ignoring its customers and users.

Since you’ve taken the time to post your thoughts, I hope you’ll reconsider your plan to stop recommending the company’s products. Melih has stated that a bug-fix release is under development and should be released shortly. The users on this forum are going to hold him to his word. (Disclaimer: I do not work for Comodo nor do I have any contractual relationship with them.)

40

The issue was posted September 10, 2007. In fact, here’s a link to when I posted the issue on the forums. https://forums.comodo.com/help_for_v2/critical_bug_cpfexe_and_user_profile_hives-t12545.0.html

It is not a client side issue and it is something that has to be resolved on their end. It’d be very nice to see a Comodo 2.5 which fixes these errors. In my honest opinion, it’s the only real issue left with Comodo 2.x series.

I have been watching to see if the bug release will happen soon, as I am eager to upgrade. Though with the issues 3.0.12.266 and 3.0.13.268 have had, a part of me is hesitant. I feel quite comfortable working on my computers and others as well (I’ve worked as a pc tech for about a year now that a shop opened in my town, along with over fourteen years of computer experience). This issue has completely stumped me unfortunately. I’ve tried every approach except for installing in Safe Mode. Though this may not sound quite so nice, it’s comforting to see that I am not the only one having the issues upgrading. If I knew how I could correct those issues and install the firewall, I most certainly would.

For now, I’ve been recommending that users stick with Comodo 2.4 unless they feel comfortable upgrading. The CPF.exe and User Profile Hive issue that I submitted has me quite irritated at how they handled the support request. If they were to get a five star rating, I would give it one star. They received plenty of information. Logs from UPHClean’s reports, screenshots of the logs and exact steps on how to replicate the issue. Then months of “our developers are working on this issue, we will get back to you once we get the solution.” When Comodo 3 was released, it was “upgrade” as the solution. If this was a pay firewall and you had to pay to upgrade, that would be beyond unacceptable. Regardless, the months of brushoffs until Comodo 3 was out in itself was unacceptable. It has given me the impression that they did not bother to look into the issue at all, or even try to find any kind of solution. With that kind of “support” I can easily understand how anyone would be put off from using any of the company’s products. Should I decide to inform users not to stick with Comodo, they will be given a nicely detailed explaination of my issue and experiences such as I have posted here.