eTrust Keeps Asking Me to Validate Same Program Over and Over

I recently installed eTrust (Computer Associate's) Firewall and Anti-Virus suite (if that's the term for it.) It was a free promotion provided by my cable company, MediaCom. I uninstalled Zonelab's ZoneAlarm (Free) edition as required. Incidently, is eTrust and ZoneAlarm the same thing? Many of the help pages take me to Zonelab's website.

Anyway, about my problem. I've gotten this on ZoneAlarm Firewall too. A program, such as Microsofts Anti-spyware, requests access to the internet. The firewall's approval window pops up and I click on "Accept" button. I also click on "remember this setting". Then the next day or so when I restart my computer I get the same program, Microsoft Anti-Spyware Beta, asking permission to access the internet.

This happens with other programs as well, but not always everyday. Can somebody tell me what's going on here? Am I somehow clearing out the "memory" (cookies) or whatever eTrust Firewalls stores this information? I don't normally play around inside my firewall program. I prefer to set it and forget it, but this having to re-accept the same program over and over is tedious.

Thanks if you can tell me what's going on and thanks if you're just reading and can offer nothing more than sympathy. Are you getting the same thing too?

Dave

 

I am the only person this is happening to?

 

If eTrust firewall is a ZA clone it could suffer from the same occassional database corruption that ZA does. Check you "C" drive (the default) for a directory named Internet Logs and the files iamdb.rdb and backup.rdb. (likely they will be there as you were using ZA before unless you removed everything).

You will need to delete these files and start fresh with your program rules. Deleting will usually require you to reboot into safe mode, delete the files and reboot again.

Regards,

CrazyM