Should Firewall Load before other apps?

Hi -

It seems like NAV and NPF used to load prior to most other softwares, but these days they don't appear to. Actually, it is sort of hard to know which actually is loaded first, I am just going by the appearance of the tray icons.

I thought to look at BootVis, but I am a right hemisphere type and the program seems both incomprehensible, and dangerous to me.

Is this an important issue? Is there a solution 'for the rest of us'?

- HandsOff




"Hit 'em low, hit 'em fast, hit 'em hard. And if they get up, hit 'em again"

 

Hi HandsOff,

In general, when or in what order icons appear in the system tray is not a representation of when your firewall or AV starts to protect you. Services start and drivers get initialized before you login and see your desktop. You would be better off checking your event logs or boot log (if you enable it at the F8 menu before Windows starts) for errors.

Nick

 

Hi Nick, always good to hear from you!

Here is the thing...yeah, i guess i knew the tray icon thing would not carry much weight around here, but just the same, if it appeared first for six months, and then one day it starts appearing last...but, ok, I did as you suggested, only, two things...

1- i did enable the boot log...but where do i find it...in the boot?

2- let's say it does boot last, can this be changed in a simple safe procedure, that the average computer user can fathom...uh oh...i hope you answer fast because...Nnnnnoooooo!...i am getting another bright?!? idea

-HandsOff

 

Hi HandsOff,

Hope I'm not too late . The path to the boot log is C:\WINDOWS\ntbtlog.txt. I know what you mean about the tray icon order: consistently the same for many months, then it changes. It happened to me when running the public betas of PG3. Then the order returned to normal after the final release. On my laptop, Outpost Pro is always the first icon in the tray. On my desktop, it's always the fourth (running identical tray apps on both systems). But the Outpost driver initializes early in the boot log on both systems:

Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\tcpip.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\ipfltdrv.sys
Loaded driver \??\C:\PROGRA~1\Agnitum\OUTPOS~1\kernel\FILTNT.SYS

I have seen a change in the tray order after running Bootvis, but it is usually not permanent.

Nick

 

RegRun is the only program that I know of to sort the order of the registry startup items. (http://www.regrun.com) I'm sure there's gotta be another one out there that I'm not aware of, though.

 

Thanks, Nick and Notok -

I will attempt to look at the logs (this will be a first!), then weigh my options.

-HandsOff

 

Damn! I was afraid of this, there is no ntbtlog.txt to be found on my system. I wonder if in my service killing frenzy I disabled it? it doesnt seem likely, as the bootlog is written before XP is loaded...right? I guess this calls for some more drastic measures on my part.

- HandsOff

 

Does your C:\boot.ini have the /bootlog switch:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /bootlog

Nick