I have a problem with PG 3.0beta 2 freezing which I will post about separately. When it freezes the first time after installing it, I try to terminate it via Task Manager and cannot because it is protected against termination and Task Manager is not allowed to terminate. I have to force a reboot as PG is using 50% of the CPU. In troubleshooting what is causing the freezing (which I have figured out) I try to reproduce the freezing. I do and again I try to terminate PG (procguard.exe) using Task Manager. To my surprise, I am successful! But I didn't make any changes on the Protection tab! So, I go look at that tab and to my surprise, Task Manager now has the box permitting it to terminate checked! I didn't check it. Is this new in PG 3.0 that PG automatically gives the ability to terminate to Task Manager after there is one attempt to use Task Manager to terminate a process? Why is this? .
I know you are not new to PG, but i may as well ask (to be sure). You say that it starts freezing after the first time after installing it, do you mean it starts freezing after the first reboot? Then you have to force a reboot (2 reboots after install now), because taskman failed to terminate. Then later when trying again it was successful. That sounds a lot like learning mode to me. Could it be that learning mode was indeed on when you first tried the terminate? It seems to be by design that first reboot after install enables learning mode (and third reboot turns it off). Maybe a 'ease of use' thing so that people who expect to just install and be done with it are still secure . Also, do you by chance have a dual core CPU in that computer? PS. I think you meant PG 3.3 beta 2
I haven't been using the betas because I can't view the help file and have this freezing problem. I know now how to avoid the freezing. But I'm not using this version unless I can read the help file because this version 3.3 b2 (you are right I had typed the wrong version number) is quite different in some respects from 3.1.5. I think you are probably correct that it had shut down learning mode and I didn't notice that because on the old version, it never shut down learning mode until I shut it down manually. That is how it should be. I recall now reading in this forum that has changed in this version and I don't like that change. It should be totally up to the user when they decide to shut down learning mode. When I first got PG, I ran it in learning mode for about two weeks. I am not about to start all my applications after installing PG. Plus, I sure wouldn't think to run a bunch of stuff that runs in the background. It should learn as I use the computer, and the applications, in my normal ways of using them. I am not worried that I am not really protected during this time. I wasn't "protected" before I got PG either. I noticed just now when I got on the computer that because it turned off learning mode on it's own that I had defrag.exe wanting to run and several other things. It should have stayed in learning mode for as long as I want it there like 3.1.5 does. I put it back in learning mode but if I reboot then learning mode will go off. So, how do I alter it so that learning mode stays on for as long as I choose no matter how many reboots I do? If it isn't possible to change some setting so it will stay in learning mode until I specifically tell it to go out of learning mode, then I won't use this version. How long is 3.1.5 going to be supported (as I think I might be happier continuing with it)? All I've had so far, in the several times I've tried to use this new version, is problems. DiamondCS rather airily dismissed my questions in an earlier thread and just told me to reinstall it cleanly. So, I did and I posted about it still freezing and no help file (Firefox tries to download it every time I click on Help) and I never got any official response. That's been a while ago. So, I just didn't use PG - the old version or new one. Kept waiting for some response. Finally, I decided I wasn't going to get a response so today I thought I would try again to figure this out myself. I figured out what causes the freezing which it wasn't doing every time I would install it and reboot. But I can reproduce the freezing consistently now. If I right click on the tray icon and then try to click on Global Protection Options PG freezes and uses about 50% of the CPU and I have to reboot or, after rebooting twice, use Task Manager to kill procguard.exe. I also created a new virtual machine with XP Pro SP2 on it, and nothing else, except Firefox 1.5.1 and the Proxomitron. I installed NO critical Microsoft patches. On that machine, I have no freezing. VMWare has their own graphics driver. So, this suggests the nVidia driver on the host (or nView Desktop Manager) may have some conflict with the PG menu that appears on right click on the systray icon. On that machine, I also have NO problem getting the Help file to appear when I click on Help. Fx does not try to download the file. It just opens as it should. That suggests to me there might be some problem on the host machine, which is a NEW computer just about a month old, with some critical patch I installed that has to do with HTML Help Control which I did not install on the VMWare machine. This new machine has a Pentium 4 670 processor (3.8Ghz) with hyper threading and NCQ.
There has been a lot of discussion here about whether or not earlier versions of PG were supposed to turn off learning mode automatically and whether they did so or not. Users have had mixed experiences. For some, the earlier versions turn off learning mode automatically. For others, it never turned off until the user turned it off.
It all depends on if you followed the step by step guide or not. Learning mode does not turn off automatically except for the initial install sequence. After that learning mode stays on as long as you want it to.
No, only this new version has it turn off automatically. It never did that with earlier versions (at least not for me). It shouldn't with this new version either. This new version takes away control from the user as far as I can see. The reason we use PG is because it gives ultimate control to the user. When that is taken from us, for whatever reason DiamondCS has, it takes away from the appeal of the application. I don't care whether it is the initial install sequence, or after you have used PG for a 100 days or what, it shouldn't turn anything on or off without the user's express permission. It borders on making PG too much like all the crappy applications no one who isn't a newbie wants because they control you instead you controlling them.
We were talking about something different. 3.1.5 and 3.2 both turned off learning mode automatically after the initial install. IF one followed the step by step guide. After that, learning mode would stay that way until turned off again. I have not run these betas. I limit things to one or two beta at a time. I understand that these beta changed and learning mode does not stay on.
PG still gives ultimate control basically everything we give you control over is still free to be changed.. except any option which would cause your PC not to be bootable, and why would you want that ? Learning Mode turning itself off is determined by the registry value Reboots= , so if you don't uninstall correctly (with the uninstaller) this value may then be incorrect. From a clean install there will never be the problem, it sets itself on and then off when you reboot twice. After you've used PG for 100 days it DOESN'T do anything unless you tell it, thats the point. For it to be in learning mode at this time, you must have put it there ?
Thank you for confirming this. Anything that prevents writing to the registry keys or that resets them would then cause the learning mode to keep turning itself off. A simple fix would be to change this to a value greater than two so that any subsequent resets or reversions would still have this feature in a completed state.
