This morning I checked the Notification Area (Windows 7) and noticed that the BFP icon was red. Hovering over it said, "Protection inactive." Clicked on it and all the tiles in the home screen were gray. Then clicked on Update and the program crashed. Went into Reliability Monitor and it turns out there was an apparently failed attempt to update BFP late last night: Within a couple of seconds of the crash that occurred after I clicked on Update, the red BFP icon disappeared from the Notification Area. Suggestions? P.S. BFP seems to have been uninstalled completely from my computer! There's no item for it in the Start Menu and it's nowhere to be seen in Programs and Features under Control Panel.
It looks like you have prevented application installs due to a policy turned on: https://www.sync.com/help/installation-error-1603/ This would explain it. After changing this just download it again from the web site and you will be fine again.
Thanks for the tip. Tried it and now I can't install BFP. I'm getting the following popup during installation: Strange, this didn't happen before when installing BFP. And according to Programs and Features, I do have that x64 Visual C++ redistributable installed. Twice, even: version 14.22.2781 installed on 12/21/19, and now version 14.24.28127 installed today (presumably while reinstalling BFP). What should I try next?
It needs the 64 bit edition by the sounds of it. I have seen this once before, I will see if I can locate the article on this. Yes we wrote an article on this here: https://www.blackfog.com/knowledge-base/installation-failing-pre-requisite-installation/ You really aren't having much luck, I must say....
The MS Troubleshooter also failed to uninstall (or, for that matter, to install) that Visual C++ Redistributable. Nor could I do anything with it via Programs and Features --> Uninstall Program. However, after rebooting, I tried to install BFP again and this time everything worked. Go figure. And I'm down to just the 14.24.28127 version of Visual C++. I guess it's true what they say, "When all else fails, reboot!"
Glad its all working, sounds like the MS installer had not completed correctly and the reboot allowed it to clean up.
New question about BFP: when I open the Dashboard, all the tiles there (Advertising, Profiling, etc.) are grayed out. When I hover the mouse pointer over a tile, a while outline appears around it, but then if I click on it, nothing happens. Is this normal, intended behavior? I would expect the Dashboard to provide details about what lies behind each of the tiles, otherwise what's the Dashboard for? One other, unrelated question: in the Settings, what does checking/unchecking the Application Gateway checkbox do? Thanks!
@JEAM yes this is intended, but you are getting close to revealing what we will do in 5.0. So well spotted. Re the App Gateway it monitors the protocol in use and ports. For example a lot of new ransomware does port hopping... which is using other ports on your machine to send say SSL traffic. This will detect the use of a non mandated pot for SSL and stop it basically. @Krusty I wish we could repeat this one, but I will let engineering know and keep playing with it to see if they can work it out. We did embed a few hidden features in 4.5 which can help you. I will PM you after engineering has reviewed it some more. I just don't want to publish some of these facilities just yet.
Thanks @Darren Williams, I'll keep an eye out for upcoming developments regarding the Dashboard. And thanks for the explanation about the Application Gateway. I'll leave that option checked.
@Darren Williams , It just happened again. Checking Events I see this: The time lines up with my attempt to visit YouTube. Cheers.
Thanks Krusty. They clearly don't like us blocking the data collection. We will have a play and work around it. It's always amazing to us how much data these sites are actually collecting that people don't even realize.
Sigh... This is happening more frequently now. It's becoming a pain in my backside. Not blaming BF, Darren. I know it is Google.
Yes they have recently changed their advertising system, to try and get around all the blockers. We are working on a solution though. Looks like it will be a simple rules update too.
Hello & thanks for your help before - I have an issue I can live with is my download speed is perfect & as it should be - However my upload speed is roughly half what it is with BF not installed - This was the case with my previous PC & this is a totally new new build, also my ISP is totally different now it's FTTP all new fibre at the moment the system is being load balanced so I'm on 220 up & 20, but get 9 up with BF installed - I had exactly the same issue with my previous ISP (& PC) which was FTTC - I've tried most things including removing my AV & almost everything else, does anyone else have this issue - As I said if need be I can live with it - Regards Paul
@PwT we actually bench test this and normally get 90-95% of what it is without it running. I will confirm with the developers with the latest release. Results do show it degraded slightly more than we would like, so I will get the team to profile it and see if there are some ways to get it back around the 80% mark. We certainly do a lot on the latest versions, but lets see what the team can do.
Hi Darren, If it helps, I see these YouTube blockages more often if I click on a shortcut to a channel rather than going directly to YouTube. May not help, but just thought I'd mention it. Cheers!
@Krusty Yes that makes sense because they are embedding referrals data in these links and recording as much as they can about you. I will point this out. Re the performance of upload I would like to point out that you need to be careful when you are using synthetic testing to evaluate raw speed because these are designed for brute force tests with packets so they don't really correlate with real world scenarios. We can certainly optimize things some more to get some more performance but it's a law of diminishing returns since its pretty highly optimized already.
@PwT we have managed to get this back to wire speed at 95% plus with some tweaking of buffers on the network. Please PM me with your email address and I can send you a version to verify.
@Darren - Problem sorted, I've been using the net for 27 years & your company has to be the best in the known universe, absolute (excluding the Romulan empire of course) You have a customer Ad Infinitum
@PwT Very nice of you to say. We just try to be the type of company we would want to deal with ourselves.