Important: Fix for Win9x IMON problems

[Karl_Menshy]

Hi all,

after having reported a few problems of getting IMON to work on 9x based systems and after gpdev confirmed this issue to me (Thanks!) and encouraged me to mess some more with the registry settings ( once again thanks, gpdev), I came up with a fix to make IMON work on 9x based systems.

But beware: This includes manually editing you registry, so please don't blame me if anything goes wrong. You can probably damage you whole internet access. This is only for experienced users.

Now that the warning is said, here we go: After you installed and enabled IMON go to the following registry key in regedit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\WinSock2\Parameters\Protocol_Catalog9\Catalog_Entries
You should see a list of numbered providers as subkeys. Each subkey contains a binary PackedCatalogItem value. Open this value and (only) if it starts with imon.dll change this setting to c:\windows\system\imon.dll. Please make sure that the PackedCatalogItem does not increase in length (last full line should be 0370) and that after the c:\windows\system\imon.dll entry you have at least one plain zero.

After this reboot and enjoy. IMON scans your emails and internet access won't crash.

So: This IS an IMON install bug and I would really like to see it fixed because I am not sure if everybody on a 9x system would like to do this manually. Btw, I checked this issue on ME and it seems to occur there, too.

If you have any questions about this fix, pm me. And again: You do that on your own risk!
Regards, Karl.

[Tomas]

Hi Karl

Here are some comments from "inside". It's true, that there is no path included in imon record in winsock protocol catalog. But this fact shouldn't cause any problem, because imon.dll is located in system directory which is always searched when LoadLibrary() call is used. It's not really problem to change setup, so that it will include full path in catalog entry, but I have to check if notheng else sill be affected by such change. I've never met such problem and I'd like to know what is this conflicting with. Can you send (using PM to me or to Jan) some details about affecte machines (installed softwarre which may affect winsock configuration and so on). I'd also like to see original (not changed) catalog entries from registy (all, not only imon related).
Regards

Tomas
IMON developer

[Karl_Menshy]

Hi Tomas, just a few words in public,

I know that LoadLibrary should find imon.dll, that's why I thought that a registry change shouldn't affect the problem. And I have traced down the problem to Win98 only. I have browsed through all available to me MSDN etc to see if the implementations of LoadLibrary differ, but again, cannot come up with a good reason.

Fact is: The full path name change fixes the problem for me. I have posted this fix if anybody else encounters this problem.

Will report more detail in the pm in order not to "waste " forum space for this discussion.

[Karl_Menshy]

Well, seems that I have been chasing a bug that does not exist :P, I don't know where it came from and where it went, but seems that my winsock settings were just all too corrupted to let IMON install correctly.

The above posted instructions fixed the problem, but not because IMON needs the path info, but manually editing the registry must have ironed out a bug that existed before. Sadly, I did not save the original registry entries that happened before the first IMON install (how could I knew it wouldn't work...). But after a winsock uninstall, reinstall everything works just fine, even on Win98 ;).

So my thanks to the ESET team for reviewing my bug reports, and sorry for the false alarm ;D.

Karl.

Note to the mods: maybe it's better to close this thread? Maybe remove the above info in order not to lure anybody into messing with the registry? Please do as you wish.

[Pieter_Arntz]

Good job, Karl.

No need to alter your post. It has a clear warning in it about editing the registry.

Thanks for posting back,

Pieter

[Karl_Menshy]

Ok, Pieter :).

Anyway, maybe it would be a good idea to collect info if anybody experiences a similar problem of IMON/winsock registry settings related difficulties. Maybe it would be possible to see under which circumstances this setup error occurs so that ESET can add it to their KB.