A workaround for those with issues with Outpost third party AV compatibility in Vista

A workaround for those with issues with Outpost and third party AV compatibility in Vista

I never had any issues with Outpost and third party AV programs in XP; however I upgraded to Vista Ultimate a couple weeks ago and have been struggling with incompatibility problems.

I have tried Kaspersky, Avast, Avira, and found that as long as they loaded first at startup everything was fine but if Outpost loaded first they would not load completely and the OS was unusable. I also tried G Data and if it loaded first it was ok but if Outpost loaded first the G Data virus databases would be corrupted and even make Vista think it was not activated.

Through trial and error I found that it was Op-Mon.exe (Outpost’s system tray app) that was the culprit.

The workaround for this problem is to set Outposts startup mode to “background” so it does not load the tray app and everything should load fine no matter which app loads first at boot up. If you want the Outpost Tray to load make a shortcut to the Op-Mon.exe and then put it in the startup folder at “User Name”/AppData/Microsoft/Windows/Start Menu/Programs/Startup.

Programs in the startup folder load last so your AV will load first every time with no conflicts.

Now I am not sure if this workaround can cause security issues like exclusions and application settings in Outposts tray app being applied until that tray app is started, does anyone know if this is the case?

If so it could cause a gap or momentary gap in security depending if you start the app via the startup folder or not.

EDIT: If the workaround is not working or buggy you also may need to add the Op-Mon.exe and ACS.exe to your exceptions or exclusions of the real time scanner in your AV and add your AV’s *.exe’s that load at startup to the self protection exclusions list in Outpost.

 

Mods, this post is worth a sticky no?

 

Re: A workaround for those with issues with Outpost third party AV compatibility in V

Vendors should address bugs/conflicts with fixes.

Workarounds by end users are workarounds, and can usually entail a need to disable some security or in this case delay the startup. This I find unacceptable.


- Stem

 

Re: A workaround for those with issues with Outpost third party AV compatibility in V

I submitted a ticket to Agnitum Support to ask about this and they said;

~Private communications removed per the TOS.~

So it appears this workaround is safe as far as security is concerned for those that maybe worried about that.