HELP!!! Error msg: "Failed to change settings"

Hello, and --- HELLLLLP!!!! PLEASE!!!!!

Just installed Eset Smart Security 4.0.xxx BUSINESS Version latest version, on 4 computers, and on ONE computer (only, others are okay) I cannot change ANY settings, such as "Allow sharing". wHEN I try, a little error msg pops up - "Failed to change settings." Have never seen that error before. This is preventing this computer from being in the domain network. (though computer is getting its proper IP address okay via DHCP)

Am running Windows XP Pro SP2, logged in as Administrative user. I have uninstalled & reinstalled ESS several times, same result. Have uninstalled every other previous antivirus, firewall, anti-malware, etc. on that computer. (to prevent conflict -- but now its totally unprotected, & I am desperate to have protection working on here).

The only thing I find googling this error message was a couple of people had same problem when using Eset under VISTA 64 bit, with UAC, (but that is not the case here).

I have run HijackThis, which finds nothing problematical there. Was previously running NOD32, plus Online Armor firewall, plus did periodic scans with Spybot & etc., so I believe the system to be uninfected.

I HOPE SOMEONE HERE CAN PLEASE HELP ME!!!

 

Are you able to change other settings not related to personal firewall?

 

Yes, I can change settings of antivirus, antispyware, antispam.

But Firewall settings cannot disable, cannot change protection (strict vs sharing), cannot add zones or rules.

 

Are you able to write into the "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\ESET\ESET Smart Security" folder? If so, does disabling self-defense followed by a computer restart make a difference?

 

Hi & thanks for trying to help me.

(What exactly did you mean by "disabling self-defense" There is no such setting within ESS for disabling "self-defense". Do you perhaps mean disabling the firewall?

I went to the "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\ESET\ESET Smart Security" folder, using Windows Explorer, and tried to write something to it (e.g., I right-clicked in that folder and selected "New Text Document", as a test). At first, It would not let me create that new file there. I explorered further.

I found some very strange things going on within that folder.

When I look at the Properties of that folder, it had the "Read Only" attribute box filled in (i.e., not a check mark, but just a colored square was in it, which indicates that there are SOME objects within that folder or its subfolders which are set as Read Only). However, I manually went through every single subfolder underneath it, and checked for ReadOnly attribute, and found NOTHING marked as READ ONLY. Weird.

When I clear that checkbox, and tell Explorer to apply the clear to All subfolders, files etc beneath it, then immediately I get an "Error Applying Attributes" message, stating that it could not apply the attribute change to the file EHttpSrv.xml in the folder, stating that "Access is denied."

If I say "Ignore" to that message to let the Apply Attributes continue working, it errors again on epfwdata.bin, then on EpfwUser.dat. Just those three files, which are in the first level of the \ESET Smart Security folder.

Weird, but another thing that's weird, is that if I look at the Properties of each of those 3 files, they have the ReadOnly attribute box cleared!! So why are they triggering this error message on my attempt to globally clear ReadOnly attribute on the entire folder and its subs?

There is a fourth file in there, EpfwTemp.dat, and there was no error on that one, nor on all of the other subfolders and their contents.

So next I looked at the Security Tab of the Properties window of this folder.

It shows two Group or user name entries:
Administrators
and
SYSTEM

No Allow/ Deny boxes were checked so I checked Full Control for Administrator. It accepted that no problem.
Then I was able to create the New Text Document in the folder.

Then I explored further in the Properties-Security of the folder.

It shows that Administrator has Full Control and that this applies to All subfolders, files, etc. underneath it. Yet still, If I try to clear the Read Only attribute for the folder and apply that to all subfolders, it errors on those 3 files mentioned above. Now, why should it do that, if I have Full Control?

Okay, so I went to the Advanced button of Security Settings for the Folder

It shows that Administators is the Owner.

When I tried to look at Effective Permissions for my user account (jkoe, which is an administrator account), it won't let me even select a user or group to check the effective permissions of -- (I click the "Select" button on Effective Permissions tab to select which user or group to check, and I get this error message:

Select User, Computer or Group
the advanced page cannot be opened because of following error:
The server is not operational.

HUH?

So I checked another peer folder to this one --
\All Users\Application Data\Google
and found there is no problem there, I can use the user,Computer,Group browser to select a user to check the effective permissions for.


So, WHAT server "is not operational" when I try to check Effective Permissions of the \Application Data\ESET\ESETSmart Security folder?

I checked under Adminsitrative Tools-Services, and see that the Server service is indeed running. So I don't know what "server" it's talking about that is not operational.

This all seems very weird to me.

Now, I checked on another of my computers on which I installed this same Eset Smart Security Business installer 4.0.467.0.

I find there that the Properties-Security picture of the folder is quite different.
1. It still does show on the "General" tab that the ReadOnly checkbox is partially checked.
2. On the Security Tab, it has a lot of users & groups there:
Administrators Full Control
(All boxes have checkmarks in them, but they are filled
with gray, so that nothing can be changed there)
CREATOR OWNER Nothing checked
Power Users All boxes are gray+checked EXCEPT for the Full Control box
SYSTEM Full Control
Users Only Read, List Contents, and Read & Execute are checked.

3. Under Advanced, Owner is "Administrators"
4. I can check Effective Permissions, no problem.

--------------
What is going on here with this one computer?
It is as if something is not working right when ESS is installed.
That might suggest an infected computer, but I have scanned this computer multiple times with a variety of scanners, and it comes up clean.
And it seems like this computer is otherwise working well.

There is one odd thing about this computer that I have not been able to figure out:

When in Windows Epxlorer I go to Tools-Folder Options-View, and I select the radio button for "Show Hidden Files and Folders", and I Apply that setting to All Folders in the computer, that works okay.

But, after a while, perhaps after a restart of the PC, that setting gets reverted back to "Don't Show hidden files and folders." that is an oddity, I have searched and searched for a solution to it, but so far have not found why it is doing this.

I think that is the only anomalous thing that I see about this computer. I wonder if whatever is causing that may somehow be related to the problem I'm having with ESS?


Is any of the above helpful to you in diagnosing this problem

I certainly hope you or someone can help me with this -- the computer in question is my main computer.

 

That weird folder thingy is probably because self-defense is still on. Self-defense is exactly what it says Eset defends itself from being tampered or shut down by virusses/malware. Go to advanced setup tree, in the top ->antivirus and antispyware ->uncheck self-defense

 

Thanks, but no, that's not the problem. Because I have the ESET "self-defense" enabled on my four other computers, and none of them have this "weird folder thingy".

So it would seem that there is some conflict between Eset Smart Security and something that is on this one computer. But I have ruled out all the obvious things - no other anti-malware programs running realtime protection, etc.

 

It's not clear whether you've tried disabling self-defense and restarting the computer. Could you confirm or deny that doing so resolves the problem?

 

Yes I did try disabling self-defense and restarted computer. That did not resolve the problem with the firewall.

In fact, it is now worse:
1. I am unable to turn the firewall on at all, even using the advanced setup tree.
2. Now, new problem with Antivirus -- Web access protection is "non-functional", and I cannot turn it on (even in adv. setup tree).

Does anybody have any idea about what else I could try to help diagnose it?

thanks

 

I managed to get the firewall turned back on, but still I cannot change the protection level and cannot add a rule or zone.

In other words, no progress on this problem since six days ago now, and still no response from Eset to my tech support request ticket.

And on a couple of other computers, Eset is using 50% of the CPU constantly. (These are dual core CPUs - it's using one entire CPU 100%). Do I really need to devote an entire CPU core to Antivirus protection? I used to think Norton and TrendMicro and Spysweeper were bad about CPU usage.

Pretty discouraging.

Is there some earlier version that I should be using instead of the current one until they get it fixed?

 

Are you saying this happens when the computer is idle and you don't perform any operations with files? Does disabling real-time protection (RTP) make a difference? If so, have you tried setting RTP to scan files with default extensions instead of all files?

 

Here we go again.....

They need to make a sticky about this.Something else is going on with your system, that has an impact on your Eset software, you need to figure out what it is, and fix the issue, then Eset can function properly and not hog CPU time and resources.I have seen with having adobe flash installed, when I go to the properties for add on's, that the Adobe install is damaged.While it is like this, when I go to a web page that utilizes flash, Ekrn tends to go a little bonkers, until I fixed the issue with the flash player, then everythings fine.Something is going wrong either with your file system or OS kernel, until you figure out what it is, it's going to affect and have an impact on your anti-virus software.Mabe you should save all your files and do a clean install of your operating system and all these problems will be solved.

 

Maybe on some of your registry keys on your administrator account, the security level has been tampered with by something, possibly a malicious program.you should try to follow instructions I posted about subinacl here https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=256233 and see if then you can change your firewall settings.

 

I should have put this in a separate thread, because it pertains to other computers, not this one that's having the "Failed to change settings" probelm with the firewall.

But to answer your question: the 50% CPU usage (100% on one core of a dual core CPU), is on a Windows 2003 Server. Just now, I disabled RTP. About one minute later, the ekrn.exe CPU usage dropped to 0-1%. Now I re-enabled RTP, but ekrn.exe has not (yet) resumed 50% CPU usage. But if I come back to the computer later, it probably will be at 50% again. I just noticed that under "Computer Scan" it says that it is running a scan. But is says Running - 0%. I don't know how long this scan has been running. I tried to Stop the scan, it does not seem to want to stop.

So, that computer has a different problem with ESS 4. But, this is a different topic than the topic of this thread.

 

The thing is, this computer WAS running Eset NOD32 v.3, until I uninstalled that and replaced it with ESS 4. And NOD32 was running fine, no such problem. This is a Windows 2003 Server. So the software is "Business Edition" Eset.

If what you described were applicable here, then the NOD32 should also have had problems, but it didn't. Problem is unique to ESS 4.

 

Hello?

Can nobody help me resolve this problem

Have not heard back from Eset Tech support any response to my ticket on this in a week and a half now. Very disappointing performance from their tech support.

 

If it's not saving the settings, then you don't have permission to write to that particular registry key, you need to find the key and check it's permissions.

 

Try installing v3. If the problem persists, it must be a problem of your permissions and not a self-defense issue.

 

Does it store the firewall settings in a file or in the registry ? I know most of the settings from the advanced options are stored in the registry, but i'm not sure about all settings.

 

Hello jonkoer,

Please perform a full maunual uninstall with our uninstall utility: http://kb.eset.com/esetkb/index?page=content&id=SOLN2289

NOTE: Double check to be sure that all ESET files, folders and registry entries were removed. The uninstall utility should remove everything.

We recommend using NOD32 on servers. You can install the latest build of NOD32 4.0. If you wish to run Smart Security, install and let me know if the issue persists.

Thank you,
Richard

 

Thats one of the things I hate about support and it's good I can allways fix my own computer problems and never needed to turn to support of any kind ( aside from mabe a google search here and there to help me out LOL ).Such scripted responses from support, usually in which the user is told to uninstall / reinstall, even after the user has stated doing so several times.It doesn't matter how many times you uninstall / reinstall, if you don't find the root cause of the issue, it will allways come right back.

No offense to Richard or anyone else @ Eset support, but thats not what I would call getting to the bottom of this.

If these settings are stored in the registry, check your permissons, if stored in a file check it's permissions.I gave him an idea what to try if thats the case, but no response from the guy if he tried a full permissions reset with subinacl instructions or not.And it's obvious a setting is " sticking " because he completely removed and reinstalled allready with the same results, which I wouldn't call it an Eset problem, more like windows is doing something it's not supposed to be doing.

Different settings are stored in different registry keys or subkeys, why he has permission to write to one but not the other, I have no idea.If it was an internal program error, then that would have been fixed the first time he uninstalled / reinstalled.

You either need to reinstall the OS or reset all your permissions to system and admin for all registry keys and file system with subinacl, if you ever want to get this to work right, case closed.