Hello Everyone, Recently downloaded pgfree, installed it, configured everything including what proggys would be protected. Noticed that upon install process guard it's self was already in the list, was a bit surprised, since on the site it says only one program can be in the protected programs list, tho, it does make sense to have pg in the list as well as the program you chose your self. (Question one: can you have pg and another program, both in the protected programs list?) I chose zonealarm to be my protected program. Then gave pg time to learn my usually activities. Then shutdown the computer. Upon restarting the system today, and going to the protected programs list, i noticed that both pg & za had gone from the list and been replaced by what i can only describe as the icon you usually get when you have a shortcut on your desktop and you delete the program for whatever the shortcut is for, eg a failed path icon. (Question two: whats gone wrong ?) I have not taken any action since i saw this, to change anything, as i wanted to get some advice from the people who are the experts on the program first. Finally, question three: Have read the forums and saw that there is a vulnerability in pg, and that a fix is will be released soon. However, how is this fix to be distributed ? as i notice that pg (free one atleast) dose not have a "check for updates" feature built in, and since the process guard section of the site dose not have a news section will the current version of pgfree which is available for download in the download section, just be changed with the new version, and you then have to download the program again ? Cheers, Meed. - btw Glad to see that there are still independent software development community's out there that are pushing forward with new and innovative ideas, Good job guys
Greetings Meed! Welcome to Wilders! You are right that PGfree will allow one protected app in addition to its own protection (otherwise the other app caould be got at by first disabling PG itself, also this gives the user the ability to test how strong PG's self-protection capabilities are). I am not sure what might be causing the icon issue. I take it that this issue persists across reboots? Have you tested whether the protection is there in spite of the discrepancy? It might be worthwhile to uninstall PG, reboot, and disable any file/virus protection software prior to reinstalling it. Regarding the update, you are right that there is no autoupdate feature, but if you check here regularly you will see a sticky thread about the latest release so you can keep abreast that way. Sorry I could not help more on the troubleshooting
Why Thank you Dan, and cheers for your input. Well i seemed to have solved the problem via some system restores. Hopefully it will stay that way. Also, i'm sure (may be wrong) when i first installed pgfree, the program name next to the PG icon in the protected programs list was called procguard.exe, as is shown on the Web Site. However, now it's called "dcsuserprot.exe" is this normal ? Cheers, Meed.
Hi Meed, dcsuserprot.exe is the main .exe, procguard.exe is just for the user interface. procguard.exe does not need to be running once protection is enabled but you will lose logging. There is a bug in some pc's with regards to losing the protection list a corrupted pguard.dat, before installing PG it is best to run chkdsk /f and defrag your hard drive. Jason is aware of these minor bugs which he hopes will be rectified for the next release. HTH Pilli
Thnx Pilli, I have just ran defrag, and all is well now, except for one DAT file called pghash in windows\system32 that would not defrag. This file isn't anything to do with process guard is it ? As for chkdsk /f , i don't use command switches that often, so bare with me I just ran the chkdsk (with no tags on the end) command to just scan the disks, and came back with the following results: Chkdsk is verifying files (stage 1 of 3).. File verification completed Chkdsk is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3).. Index verification completed Chkdsk is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3).. Security descriptor verification completed Am i correct in assuming that this means that there are no cross-linked or any additional errors on the disks ? or is just the chkdsk cmd not enough to find the errors ? Cheers, Meed.
pghash is the checksum data store for Process Guard's checksum capability. Ig PG is enabled i.e procguard.sys is running you will nor be able to access pghash for obvious reasons. C:\Documents and Settings\Alan>chkdsk /? C:\Documents and Settings\Alan>chkdsk /? Checks a disk and displays a status report. Here are the parameters for chkdsk, Start -Run - CMD - Type chkdsk /? for help CHKDSK [volume[[path]filename]]] [/F] [/V] [/R] [/X] [/I] [/C] [/L[:size]] volume Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon), mount point, or volume name. filename FAT/FAT32 only: Specifies the files to check for fragmentation . /F Fixes errors on the disk. /V On FAT/FAT32: Displays the full path and name of every file on the disk. On NTFS: Displays cleanup messages if any. /R Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information (implies /F). /L:size NTFS only: Changes the log file size to the specified number of kilobytes. If size is not specified, displays current size. /X Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary. All opened handles to the volume would then be invalid (implies /F). /I NTFS only: Performs a less vigorous check of index entries. /C NTFS only: Skips checking of cycles within the folder structure. The /I or /C switch reduces the amount of time required to run Chkdsk by skipping certain checks of the volume. As you can see the /F parameters allows chkdsk to fix errors on the disk ans is lot deeper than the straight forward CHKDSK command. HTH Pilli