Sygate Firewall Service always stopping--XP PRO/SP2

Yesterday, the following happened to me. In a stable security environment--I had made some uninstalls and cleaned up some temporary files, but had restarted some time after shut down--I browsed the Internet for some time (blogs and news) and then turned to downloading the beta of H+BEDV Antivir with incremental updating. When I had finished but before I had installed the Antivir, I noticed that the Sygate systray icon was missing. I tried to restart the program from start>programs>sysgate>sygate personal firewall, but nothing happened. I went to start>settings>administrative services>services and looked at sygate pesonal firewall. It was set to automatic but stopped. I tried restarting it. It said it was started but then after about 20 seconds it reverted to stopped. I tried again several times (about 10). I opened task manager and observed that when I started the service, smc.exe showed that it was loading, and the amount of storage it was taking was up to about 14MB, rather large, then task manager showed that smc.exe disappeared: it was no longer a running process. This was in the same time frame that services was showing that sygate personal firewall service was stopped. I had Avast on line web scanner operating when I was on the web, Process Guard (it was in learning mode for the download); I ran rootkit revealer (nothing); I ran some on-demand antispyware programs (Lavasoft, Spybot, Ewido--nothing). After I installed the Antivir Beta, I uninstalled and reinstalled sygate personal firewall (in a completely different folder), and things returned to normal. I have since run a boot-time scan with Avast and then an on-demand scan with the fully updated Antivir. Nothing. (It is possible to get Avast and Antivir to work stably together; they have been in this configuration for months without any problem with the firewall.) Any ideas anyone what happened? Is there any known malware that can force Sygate Personal Firewall service to stop?

I see from another thread that Sygate is being sold to Symantec. Anyone have any comments on the following: I liked Sygate. What would be the right migration path for someone who actually liked the way Sygate works?

Thanks very much.

George75

 

It is possible that malware could do that, but it is just as possible in my experience that Sygate could just be doing something weird and having a glitch of some kind. Innocent enough.

If you scanned with an AV and anti-spyware programs then I'd not worry any more about it. If it happens again then you can rethink things, but until then I'd just forget about it. Every system and firewall has bugs and weird/odd things happen from time to time. Doesn't always mean something bad.

As far as the Symantec thing, if you like Sygate then I'd keep using it as is. Unless you're forced to seek something else for some reason.