Problem with PrivateFirewall?

Hi.
Running XP Pro SP3 here.
Using the built-in XP firewall, and running WSA 8.0.0.60 since a few days.
The AV only, not Essentials or Complete.
Yesterday night I installed PFW 7.0.25.5, which is the latest release.
After reboot and importing my settings, PFW was buggy as hell.
Blocking things he was not supposed to, the Port Tracking screen was empty, etc.
Reported this to Greg Salvato. (Privacyware)

This morning, I uninstalled WSA, rebooted, and PFW was back on track.
I then reinstalled WSA AV, rebooted, and PFW is buggy again.
So there seems to be an incompatibility between these two.
I didn't try with a previous release of PFW.
WSA didn't show anything about PFW, nothing in quarantine, nothing asked anytime.
I'm reminding again it's the AV only version of WSA I installed, not Essentials. (which features a FW)

Anyone else having problems?

Thanks!
François

 

If possible, report that to Webroot support so it can get into the system and get tested internally.

 

At least someone answers me!
I thought Joe would have jumped in much earlier.
Internet connectivity gets broken, so forget about getting into my system.
FWIW, my tests showed PFW build 25.4 was working correctly.
Greg Salvato (PWI) is aware of my problem and is working on it. (don't know if he was able to reproduce it though)

Yesterday night, I installed the latest release of ZoneAlarm free, and it was buggy.
Internet connectivity got broken too.

Seems the WSA anti-virus may have compatibility problems with some firewalls.
(runs fine with XP's own though)

Thanks anyway for the suggestion!
François

 

I haven't heard of any incompatibilities with either ZoneAlarm or Private Firewall. The AV-only version of WSA doesn't have any firewall functionality enabled so I'm not sure what would have interfered.

Could you see if just disabling WSA allows it to work properly or if it is dependent on uninstalling completely?

 

Hi Joe.
Yesterday night, I had some success with disabling the Web threat filter module (or whatever it's called) and rebooting.
I had previously checked that the firewall service and gui were allowed in the processes that WSA monitors.
I suggest you ask the engineers at Webroot to double-check that the firewall functionnalities are really *completely* disabled in the AV version.
Maybe something has been forgotten when it became the official release after the beta phase.

Cheers,
François

P.S. I'll be checking with Online Armour tonight, and also downloaded the Fort Knox firewall.

 

The firewall components are definitely fully disabled in the AV-only product, however, how long have you been on the beta program? It's possible that early alpha/closed beta testers would have non-standard results as the build was speaking to different databases early on.

Thanks!

 

Thanks Joe.
I have never been on the beta team.

What does the Web Threat Shield do with the default settings?
There are four settings.

Regards,
François

 

The Web Threat Shield is URL filtering as well as search result annotation and malware protection from the website/HTTP level. Could you try disabling just the search result annotation (the first option) to see if that improves it?

Thanks!

 

Hello -

I've been testing Privatefirewall and WSA for a few hours tonight on XP Pro and observe some problems consistent with what Francois has reported. Uninstalling WSA seems to be the only way to fully resolve the issue.

WSA somehow interferes with Privatefirewall (and perhaps other third-party fws as well). The primary manifestation is a complete block of Internet access (as Francois reported with ZA) as long as Privatefirewall was running in filter mode with WSA installed (so I assume it's firewall/ndis driver related and not the HIPS/Process Monitor). With WSA uninstalled (and after reboot), these problems were no longer evident.

Also, w/ WSA and Privatefirewall installed, system reboot was very, very, slow (in some cases >15 minutes) and the system was very sluggish in general (making testing very time-consuming). Disabling the search result annotation option did not help, btw.

I am happy to try whatever other suggestions you think might resolve the XP issue. On Win7, btw, Privatefirewall and WSA appear to be working together just fine (though we have the full Beta installed on that system rather than the shipping builds available to customers now via the WR site - not sure if that matters though).

Greg Salvato - Privacyware

 

Per modifications implemented on WR's end, this issue should be resolved (I can confirm on a somewhat limited basis at least from our internal testing).

From WR support:
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We have made determinations on our side of the files from the system you collected logs with. This should have made a positive impact on your software as well as ours if there was anything being monitored.

Let us know if the issue returns. It may be likely the next versions of these files will be detected as unknowns, so it may be necessary to add them again. We will work on creating a rule to catch all these automatically.
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