Outpost firewall v7 dies on click system tray icon

Hello,

in the last few days outpost firewall v7 on windows xp pro seems to quit when i double click on its icon in the system tray.
It doesnt do this consistently but i have never had this happen before.

On clicking the outpost icon in the start menu to relaunch outpost i get an error "windows cannot access the device path. You may not have permission to access the item."

So the questions are:
1 is anyone else having this problem in the last few days (maybe a rules or spyware update has broken something?)

2 is there another way of launching outpost without rebooting?

thanks for your time

Martin

 

Just out of interest, is there a reason why you are not using the updated program (8.1) ?

 

v8 doesnt have the spyware database defs.

I did look at the time what had changed but it didnt seem worth updating what was working well.

 

The spyware module wasn't that great hence the reason why Agnitum dropped the spyware module. I'd personally update to the 8.1 program.

 

Something may have damaged your install. You could try, first saving your configuration, a clean install. Using clean.exe, located in the OP folder, in safe mode to uninstall it and clean up the registry.

Allow the machine to work until it reboots. It will look as if nothing is happening but it is. It will take a few minutes for the reboot to happen.

Download a fresh copy of your version and install it. Once done import your configuration and all your rules and settings will return.

 

I have exported my configuration successfully.

However in safe mode with network connectivity clean claims that i am not running in safe mode!

I then tried to boot into normal mode disabling outpost and most other extras in msconfig but the same error is reported whether by double click or executing clean in a msdos prompt.

any other ideas on running clean.exe?

 

Try "safe mode" and not "safe mode w/ networking" , then run clean.exe and let clean exe do its thing and your PC will restart on its own. Good luck.

 

I went to the most basic safe mode ie dos prompt and it worked from there

A pain to do but at least its rebooted now so Installation up next.

 

That is good news, let us know how you get on.

 

and now I get BSODs after installation of 7.5.2 with no details of a driver or error msg. on boot up during the knight riders splash screen

Lovely

 

I've had numerous problems installing Outpost over the years, Outpost can be a tad touchy sometimes. Do you think you have remnants of a previous firewall installation which maybe causing the problem?

 

I used clean so that should not be a problem.

I Checked the dir Outpost was installed in and it had all gone.

0x8e is the bsod hex number with lots of zeros padding the number.
But i dont think that means anything without any other messages.

 

I should have been more clearer, have you previously had a firewall installed such as Zonealarm or Comodo, I ask this because there are many cases where people have tried to install Outpost Firewall and they hit problems due to remnants from a previous firewall installation such as Zonealarm or Comodo or Kapsersky etc.. If you have then you need to find an uninstaller for that particular firewall then try installing Outpost again. Another option, I have a lifetime license for Outpost Firewall but I very happy using Comodo's Firewall, tweaked of course.

 

7.5.2 has been working since it came out for me.

I dont know how many months it has been installed but it did work with my system until i tried reinstalling it due to it exiting in the last few days.

Thus i doubt other firewall leftovers would show their face now after all this time.
Thanks for the idea though.

 

That is weird, I have never heard of that before.

 

Whocrashed
http://www.resplendence.com/downloads
can help you interpret the bsods ,as long as you still have the crash dump logs.
check here for the access error..
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2669244
Its possible some cleaner has messed with outpost,and corrupted something.Id also make sure hidden files and folders can be viewed ,and look in appdata or program data for any agnitum/outpost remnants and remove them.I would also do a registry search for any agnitum/outpost remnants and remove those too.Probably worth looking in device manager ,and show hidden devices and check for any agnitum firewall drivers under the non plug and play drivers

 

Ok i have renabled swap on my win partition so i can have crash logs again.
Enabled in system debugging.

The permisssions problem i have read but outpost works on boot up so the reasons on there cannot apply as I would not be able to launch it originally.

 

well i got v7.02 booting with xp.

So i installed 7.5.2 over the top rebooted updated and the same problem is back.

I wonder if the downloaded rules are creating this problem?

 

If you want to stay with v 7 then I suggest 7.6. I seem to recall there were some folks that had issues with 7.5.2 that were fixed with the later versions. There were some conflicts with a small number of network drivers if I recall correctly. Maybe that's what is happening to you.

Here's where you can find the other versions: http://www.agnitum.com/support/kb/article.php?id=1000290&lang=en

Remnants of other vendor's previously installed firewall can raise it's ugly head even at a later date and cause interference. If you have had some other firewall installed and you didn't use the vendor's uninstall tool then it would be a good preventative measure to do so before installing OP regardless whether or not things worked in the past.

 

Thanks i did not know there was a version 7.6

Will give it a try

 

Just to note,there have been issues where the user has updated from Outpost 7.5 to 7.6, I was reading this very issue on the outpost forum. The usual problem was the 'AFW.SYS is missing' issue, the answer to this problem is to run 'clean.exe' in safe mode but sometimes this does not work.I hope your 7.6 installation was trouble free.

 

Installed 7.6 over 7.5 and it worked until i imported my old 7.5 config and updated rules/defs.

The program dies when i enter settings but seems to be stable if i bring up the basic gui.

No mention of a missing driver just the same problem as before

 

I'm sorry to hear that, I read on the outpost forum that maybe when importing your rules from a previous config deactivating 'Auto-learn mode' whilst importing your previous rules will help. If that does not work maybe a clean install will work? uninstall 7.5 and then install 7.6.

 

Yeah looks like a clean install of 7.6 is the next step.

Its too late to turn auto learn off now so i will try that with the 7.6 install.

 

Good luck, I hope that works.