Total dissatifaction

Well, it has been a brutal week, but in a simple sentence, Wormguard has destroyed my system so badly that it looks like a total reformat is the only way out of this mess.

I installed Wormguard 1 week ago on XP Home/SP1, fully patched with admin rights, by first stopping ALL running programs & processes, except for critical system processes & services. Besides all the usual problems documented in this forum with Wormguard/XP, I've had many other problems develop. fx, most of my 50+ shortcuts no longer work, or if they work once, they won't work the next 6 times I try to use them. If I right-click a file to scan it, it will freeze all other files in the same folder. The only way to be able to open these files after they freeze up is to uninstall the resident protection, reboot, then reinstall the resident protection again. I've lost the use of a lot of my Start menu shortcuts, such as the Task Scheduler, Help & Support, etc. Folders & files act very sluggish when I open them. And on and on.

I can hear you saying now "So just uninstall the program & you're problems will go away". Unfortunatatly, that doesn't work because the hook (wguard.dll) refuses to release it's hooks. When I try to uninstall the resident protection (DiamondCS Wormguard Hook), either in the program or the Control Panel, and then uninstall the program itself, the problems remain. And Wguard.dll won't uninstall because "access is denied - the file is currently in use". Even though I was sure this wouldn't work, I tried deleting Wguard.dll in safe mode & then cleaning the Registry. That made no difference. Uninstalling & reinstalling the app doesn't help either.

I have System Restore shut down because I use GoBack. But no matter which restore utility I would use, this is no longer an option because Wormguard was installed 1 week ago, and all restore points from 7 days ago are long gone.

I have my primary partion ghosted on a seperate drive, but even this won't offer a solution because I have Wormguard installed on my ghost copy!!

Needless to say, I am not very happy now. Why you would foist such a buggy program (well documented in this forum going back to 2002) on the public is beyond me. Even in 2002, threads were posted that v4 "would be released soon" and current compatability problems would dissapear. That was 2 years ago!! And we're still waiting. To be fair, I can understand production times & beta testing running beyond the expected time, but I don't understand why this v3 was left on the market in the meantime. Sure, there are many people who seem to run Wormguard on XP without conflicts, but on the other hand, there seems to be a lot of people in this & other forums who have the sort of problems I'm experiencing.

I guess I'm not asking a question, but rather just venting my rage & frustration. I am probably looking at spending the next 2 weeks putting my system back together after reformatting. Baaaaaaa.

 

If you try to delete the (wguard.dll) do it in safe mode and it should work.

 

Sorry to hear about your problems, in future if you ever have problems simply email us (support@diamondcs.com.au) as we can help you straight away. To uninstall wguard.dll simply use "regsvr32.exe /u wguard.dll" from Start | Run, there's no need to format your computer or anything.

Best regards,
Wayne

 

Thanks for both replys & effort, but unfortunately, that doesn't help either.

Yes, I've already tried deleting wguard.dll in safe mode. The file does delete that way, but the problems still remain.

When I try to run "regsvr32.exe /u wguard.dll" from Start-Run, I get an error message stating....Load Library ("wguard.dll") failed- The specified module could not be found.

Even though I physically have the regsvr32.exe file located on my machine at C\windows\system 32 & the wguard.dll file is in my install folder.

 

That would probably be why you're getting the "specified module could not be found" message ... ?
Deleting the file should be ok, but properly unregistering it is recommended as that also cleans up the registry references to the file.

Try using the full path to the filename, ie. "regsvr32 /u c:\windows\system32\wguard.dll".

When you installed Wormguard, and also tried to uninstall Wormguard, were you logged in with Administrator rights?

Was this with the demo or full version of Wormguard?

Best regards,
Wayne

 

At installing and uninstalling, did you have any antivirus or other scanners running? If so, close them completely including the resident protection.
After you got it all off the system, you might like to install it now properly with all scanners off, reboot, after reboot get back to WG and enable protection and test it. If all that works fine again put back the other scanners one by one and look if it still runs fine, and if not which combination caused that.

Like said, do all this as an admin. You might like to test as a normal or power user to see if it all functions well in that too.

 

Hi Trapper852. No offence intended but did you install WG because you suspected an infection of some type?

I am wondering if your PC has other malware on it and WG has "upset it" so to speak.

Just guessing. Pilli

 

I love your products at Diamond CS. I have WG, PG, TDS, and PE. WG does run fine on my computer, but there are side effects that come with it. For example, I suspect that WG is responsible for 0 byte files poping up on my computer in random places and folder icon pictures changing throughout my music folder all the time. You guys seem to get upset when I recommend to potential customers that they hold of on purchasing WG until version 4 is released, but I honestly believe this to be the best decision based on my forum readings and personal experience with WG3. First, I hope that WG4 fixes all these issues. Second, I really think that no good comes from withholding expected release dates. It seems that many customers, not just myself, become concerned over this issue. The time that it's taking in combination with the lack of communication regarding expected release dates causes frustration and can ultimately lead to distrust. I hope that Diamond CS comes to realize this because I really want you guys to remain on top.

 

Have a brand clean windows system, especially an XP, without any of the DiamondCS products on it. After running it a while, 0 bytes files. Install any other program, see the windows XP pages about it, causing more 0 bytes files and Help not functioning, still without any DiamondCS product on it, OK?

DiamondCS at least has been capable to locate the problem and to write about various workabouts. As the DiamondCS products are rather deep and central on our systems, they do collect lots of the 0 bytes garbage, but by no means are the reasons of it themselves at all.

We've told you this before Dallen, and to others.

All other circumstances depend on personal things on a system.
I too have at times all my icons of certain types look different, not only on the desktop but through the whole system. Next reboot or sooner all is well again. Windows! I don't know, maybe some little memory space, whatever and also about that are countless explanation pages on internet from people who have never even heard about any DiamondCS product.

Anyway, the new WormGuard-4 contains only DiamondCS ingredients, dlls and whatever files necessary for it, so no problems with different functionallity because of files overwritten by other programs for instance.

 

Jooske,
I bet you have the coolest accent.

Regarding the 0 byte files and shortcut problems, I am sure that WG is causing what's happening on my system. All I'm saying is that I hope that version 4 fixes a lot of the problems that I'm reading about WG3, that's all.

I noticed you didn't touch on the main point in my thread, the frustration building due to the seemingly endless anticipation surrounding the release of the perpetually forthcoming version 4s of the TDS suite. I have a feeling that I know what you're thinking though. "dallen...we know your stance and your opinion on this issue...I wish you'd just keep it to yourself, pretend the issue doesn't exist, send your money to Diamond CS for the Cryptosuite, and go away." I really want to pay Diamond CS my hard earned cash, but they won't let me. All they have to do is let me know when to expect one version 4 of one of the softwares I already paid for and I will complete my set of their existing software and declare my self a source of revenue forever by continuing to purchase the rest of their releases. However, the longer they keep me in the dark the more I will continue to pour my heart out trying to pursuade them to strengthen the relationships with their customers by opening up the communication channels a bit. Also, the more I will continue to hold on to my money, become increasingly more frustrated, and eventually turn my back on Diamond CS for committing the worst sin a company can do in business. Ignoring their customers.

 

Dallen,

Many software companies don't announce release dates until just a week or two before the official release, because if they're unable to meet that date then the end result is a lot of unhappy customers, and we don't want unhappy customers. Like yourself, I use software too (ie. from other companies), but knowing when they're going to release their next products doesn't really serve me any use other than quenching my personal curiosity. In some cases we're able to give a rough estimate, but often that's unpractical if not impossible. Consider Process Guard as an example - there is no program in the world like it, and when we started development we had absolutely no idea how long it would take us because there was so much research that had to be done first before we even got into the development side of things, especially as a lot of the parts of the system we were working with are completely undocumented and there were no examples to work from. This is cutting-edge technology that has never been created before and these things take time, and that time often can't even be roughly estimated.

When companies set release dates they often put their developers under undue stress, and the end result is a program that was rushed out the door without proper testing, often resulting in many customers finding bugs and ending up with a negative impression of the program.

We release our software when it's ready, and by that I mean when we feel we've got the program to a point of completion and have tested it thoroughly here on multiple flavours of Windows (98, NT4, 2K, XP, etc), before giving it to our beta team to do "semi-public" testing, before finally releasing it to the public. This means the customer gets a full program (not something rushed out the door with a few features missing) that has been tested, and reduces the chances of customers encountering bugs or other problems.

If ignoring our customers was on our agenda we wouldn't have any forums, let alone 2 (Wilders and DiamondCS), and I wouldn't bother answering your messages ... , but remember there's only 3 of us and we can't just churn out program after program month after month. Quality over quantity.

However although we can't give you release dates (and I hope you can now understand why), I can tell you what we're up to and what's coming your way soon. A new build of Process Guard is due out in the next couple of weeks, followed by TDS4 a couple months later which our beta team will start stress-testing and should be made public not long after that, and WG4 will be the main focus after TDS4 is out, and it will be using several technologies from TDS4 (which is why TDS4 must be developed first, consequently delaying the release of WG4 which was something we couldnt anticipate, but due to the technologies we've created for TDS4 and their effectiveness, it will definately be worth the wait as it will make WG4 that much more powerful).

And, registered users will receive free upgrades, even though they're completely new programs written from the ground up, so please be patient - you will be rewarded.

Anyway, back to development.

 

Wayne - DiamondCS,
I encountered this exact answer when I lobbied for Lavasoft to communicate more openly with us in their forum. This is a very valid point and no one knows more about the above statement then developers like Lavasoft and yourself.

This is excactly the kind of information I think should be communicated. This makes me a completely satisfied customer. Lavasoft finally listened to me and gave a July 15, 2004 target date for the release of Ad-aware SE, but in doing so cautioned that it was only a target. Well...July 15 is today and the software is not out yet. I will be waiting in the forum to jump on anyone that tries to complain that they didn't meet the "deadline" because I know that it was only a target. You've probably experienced first-hand situations where customers complained for missing targets that they perceived to be deadlines which resulted in your apprehension about giving any sort of timeline. All I expect, and think is fair for both sides, is that you give us some updates every now and then with timelines like you did above. I think that it's possible to keep the customers in the loop without placing yourself in a situation where you feel you have to meet a strict deadline. Thanks for the update.

 

Thanks for your patience and understanding, it is very much appreciated.

Programming is a funny business, and writing a program is nothing like writing a book where you know what page you're up to and roughly how many pages are left to go - some things that initially seem like they might take weeks to write can all of a sudden be done in less than a day (for example when existing source code and examples are found, although that's rare with the type of software we develop), but on the other hand just when you think everything is good you might encounter a bug which may take days to isolate and maybe even longer to fix, which can be very frustrating as a programmer - we want to develop and release our software to our customers as soon as we possibly can, not spend time fixing bugs, but it's a necessary evil and just means the end result is a more stable program where customers are less likely to encounter any problems, and can feel confident that they're using a program that hasn't been rushed out the door simply due to a developer-stressing deadline.

 

As long as you're not telling the 0 bytes files are CAUSED by any of the DiamondCS products i'm willing to read all this, as we've explained thoroughly and you can read it everywhere on internet that is a Windows problem, more sensible XP issue. If that basic point where the DiamondCS products have to deal with as well has any other software, at least there is done everything possible to investigate the cause and help users to work on windows anyway.
This is but a very practicle and not unimportant sidenote to be able to work with any software, including the DiamondCS tools and programs.
We had this discussion over again so till the next release we can't know if this point is over or not, as we're still on windows. Hope Bill Gates listens to complaints like these and most of all solves it.
Of course we can do a search on the system and locate all 0 bytes files, and after examination decide to delete them IF there are no NTFS ADS Streams hidden in them. The NTFS Ads stream locator is in TDS, the general search is in windows.

Same story with the icons, many users who had never even heard of any DiamondCS company or products deal with the same, just google a bit even through this very Wilders Forum and see people dealing with it.
If it's really an issue use the Tweak function and re-associate all icons to their applications, and it should be all right again. If it was only an DiamondCS products issue it would never have been a function in such an old general tool as the Tweak.

For the release Wayne himself just gave explanations.

I like to know how the threadstarter Trapper is doing and if anything helped to solve the problems.

 

Jooske,
What's the most efficient way of gathering all the 0 byte files, determining if they are safe to delete (i.e. looking at the contents and hidden NTFS ADS Streams), and deleting them?

 

Quote Jooske

No, nothing has helped & all symptoms remain. I have accepted the fact that I will reformat soon & just be done with it.

Quote Pilli

No, not the case at all. I am extremely security conscience & probably have the cleanest machine possible. I installed WG because of my satisfaction with TDS-3 (licensed) & I made the assumption the caliber would be the same.

Quote Jooske

The answer to both is no. Every install/uninstall was done with EVERY program & process shut down, only essential Windows processes were running.

Quote Wayne

Yes, full admin rights at all times with Demo version.

Quote Wayne

Maybe I didn't explain this clearly enough. When I try to uninstall, I unregistered it first. Then if I look in Add/Remove programs, it appears that the unregistering is successful, because the "DiamondCS Wormguard Hook" listing is no longer visable. My next step is to uninstall the program in Add/Remove programs, which claims the uninstall is successfull, and the Wormguard listing disappears. At this point, you would assume the uninstall process is successful, but it's not. All my problem still exist, shortcuts don't work, sluggishness opening files & folders, etc. When I look in my install folder, wguard.dll is still there, even though it shouldn't be. If, at this point, I try to delete wguard.dll, I get a message saying the file can't be deleted because it's being used by another program!! It's as if the dll won't release it's hooks. The ONLY way I can delete the .dll is in safe mode. But that obviously doesn't solve my problems because of the registry entries left behind. And as I stated before, running a registry cleaner doesn't solve the problems either.

Anyway, thanks to all for the responses. Even though some people have symptoms the same as mine, I seem to have some unique problem thrown into the mix, and the answer probably will never be known. The vagaries of some software or rogue code somewhere, and all that.

 

Trapper: Sounds like you have tried everything, sorry to hear of troubles, unfortunately I cannot add any advice.


@ Dallen re 0 file sizes.

Yep, I can assure you I had those even before installing TDS/WG.

Here is one way I just used. Program called Effective File Search.

I set it up but the smallest size I could allocate for the search was 1kb.

Note the bottom left corner of shot... the number of files it found [this includes the 1kb] and note the time.. SEVEN SECONDS it took to search and find. Very fast

see pic.

However, that's how I look for and delete mine. I can just right click and Delete the 0's.

http://www.sowsoft.com/search.htm

Cheers, TAS

EDIT: The program is not free, but you can trial it.

PS: I just searched again and this time unchecked the 'Find Files' which gave catagories, and this searched for ALL the files [not just the 'Created Time' ones] and this time it found over 7500 files of 1Kb and less in same time of 7 seconds.
Also for a test I searched for all files under 5kb and gave me over 25,000 in 10 seconds. It certainly is fast.

 

The file finder feature of My PowerDesk (a Vcomm product) allows you to search globally for files with 0 byte size. Just for fun, I decided to look and located about 3000 files. This feature will allow you do find and delete files of t any size or almost any other criterion you may desire.

I have probably all the TDS products except for PG; but have no idea whether or not there is any relationship bwtween the programs and 0 byte files. In any case, this will allow youy to quickly and easily examine this kind of problem if you wish. Power Desk is a tremendous improvement over the Windows Explore module. I think you can DL a trial version if you wish.

Bdiamond

 

Hi Trapper852 .

I had this same problem with the hooking .dll when I once used System Safety Monitor (mchook.dll I think). Like yourself, no matter what I tried it would not delete from the SSM folder.

I ended up using DelLater by DCS and it actually worked! It may not work for you, but who knows...it's worth the shot I reckon .


Best regards,
Jade.

 

Trapper... if DelLater from Bowserman's post does not work..

go here and try this.

DrDelete

DrDelete.exe [that is a forum link, one of the guys in there wrote it]

simply browse to file name/delete and if it can't delete then, it will tell you on next bootup it will..

Bowserman just reminded me of DrDelete when he posted DelLater..

it works.. I too had a file could not delete, Safe Mode, etc. etc. and used this.

Cheers, TAS

 

Thanks for the replys Bowserman & Tassie_Devils.

I'm familiar with these "delete upon reboot" type utilities. I use a similiar product called "GiPo_FileUtilities" when absolutely everything else fails.

In my case, however, I was able to delete the dll in safe mode. But regardless if I use safe mode or one of these utilities, it doesn't address/solve the real problem, which is, the hooks haven't been unregistered upon deletion & all the registry references still exist.

Ahh well, life goes on....I guess this isn't like the end of the world, if I keep it in perspective.

 

Check the registry manually if you can ?

Go to this key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellExecuteHooks

Is there one there for Wormguard still ? Its name will be
{E12C5BEF-57C9-11D3-81C5-84C708FD407A}

If so, delete it and then search the registry for other references to that CLSID {E12C5BEF-57C9-11D3-81C5-84C708FD407A}

Note where they are for me, and reboot. Problem gone ?
If its still there we can remove the whole CLSID key if it still exists, which is at

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{E12C5BEF-57C9-11D3-81C5-84C708FD407A}

 

Regarding the 0 bytes file problem,

I've been using * ALL * DCS progs for a long time now,
on a XP system that is bought
and installed for testing all kind of applications.
This system is running for more then a year now, and i NEVER had a problem with 0 byte files.
If i search for 0 byte files then there a some of course,
because a lot of programs work with them!
F.i. a mail prog like Mozilla, will remove the last mail in the mailbox, on your command, but will NOT remove the mailbox file.(result a 0 byte file).
And so there are a lot of these.
Better: There must be!

So i am convinced that the problem is not caused by a DCS prog,
otherwise i must have found these myself.

And if there are any, what is the name and location then?
Are the all in a temp directory?

Can anyone inform me what the problem really is, i like to learn that.

 

Hi tautara.

Regarding the 0 byte file sizes, personally I have never had a problem at all..

99% of the time I don't worry about them and if I do clean them, I only get rid of the ones from the TDS folders itself.

The rest are left alone, as I don't want to bugger up anything. Some people were concerned about seeing them, but I can leave them for months then one day I might decide to clean house in TDS's folders only.

Cheers, TAS

 

hi there !
just my 2 cents worth.
i have TDS-3 PG PE and WG running on XP PRO sp1a and they run flawlessly.
i haven't had one single problem with any of the above mentioned.
one hint might be, and that is when i got my new pc and installed XP PRO
the very first programmes i installed were TDS-3 PG PE WG and then Norton Anti virus 2004 and so on.
i know Norton can sometimes be buggy, so i made sure these products were recognised on the operating system first up.
as i mentioned all these programmes work in complete harmony with each other.
regards
jay111