Windows Live OneCare 2.5 Beta

It ran light on my old P4, runs light on my PDC and Quad Core. I don't use hibernation so I cannot comment on it. Sometimes I catch myself looking down at the systray and making sure the "green 1" is still there, lol.

 

Thanks for the replies

I got my token a couple of days ago that was the reason for wanting to test WLOC.

I think i will install tomorrow and see how things run.
I guess there will be no need to use Sphinx Vista firewall with onecare.

 

Mine is permanently red because Windows Update is turned off. This is annoying, but I need security patches to stay OFF my test computer because it's the one I use to hunt malware. Unfortunately, unlike other suites (Norton, McAfee) there seems to be no way to turn off this notification.

Which brings me to my main grouse with this suite: no options, meaning I don't get to know what it's doing. Also, the on-access scanner UI tends to freeze up and die and take the OS with it if you bombard a large number of malware at it at once. Not good.

 

How do I submit a bug? I am registered, and I do have a bug I want to report, but every time I login to connect (I have to to submit one) it signs in, and says 'welcome guest'.

 

I have found my first problem.
K9 web protection does not work once onecare is installed as K9 now blocks all internet connections from working, despite multiple reboots and re-installs and adding k9 to the firewall rules.

Uninstalling k9 restores my internet

 

I have found a workaround to the K9 Problem.
http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsOneCare/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2424537&SiteID=2

So here is a solution to be applied in OneCare Firewall:
- authorized k9filter.exe to all computers and internet too

- In ports and protocols:

-> create a new rule named "K9" with this configuration here:

---> TCP/UDP ports 49000 to 65535 (it seems K9 used dynamics ports upper 50000)

---> both local ports

---> and only Local Area Network authorized only (and subnet)

And after that K9 and Onecare work fines on Vista.

 

2.5 has weak self-defense for me, I easily terminated the virus/spyware protection through task manager.

 

I asked this over at the onecare forum, but have not gotton a reply yet.

this happens on both the trail and the beta. It installs and says to restart
the PC. After restarting, the oncare icon does not appear in the sys tray.

I click on start, all programs then onecare.

The small windows comes out, runs for a minute, then the main
onecare window appears, but is blank. After a minute or two, I get
a message to try rebooting. Reboot and get the same thing.

Using XP home with all current updates.

No other AV loaded when I am trying this.

Any thoughts?

 

You may try uninstalling OC and then run the cleanup tool. It fixed a problem I had with getting an error trying to subscribe with the beta token. In my case apparently there was something left from the 2.0 install that caused the error.

 

I just turned off the MsMpEng.exe process on my laptop and immediately it was reported on the laptop and the desktop (hub). So if something does manage to turn it off you will know of it.

 

thank you for the info. I will give it a try

 

It turned red, when I got the GUI up, it reported 'fatal error' and asked me to restart. I'm sure its a bug, and I was going to report it, but connect does not let me logon even with an account

 

Actually what happened was that after both shields turned red on the computers I went to the laptop and turned protection back on. But the desktop was still reporting that the laptop was unprotected. From my understanding they do not communicate directly with each other over the LAN but through a server at MS. I waited around three minutes and then turned the laptop's protection off and enabled it again through the desktop. Once that was done they were both green.

I did notice a process I don't think was present in 2.0. It is OCHealth___.exe (can't remember the full name). If someone out there that is still using 2.0 could see if this process is running I would appreciate it.

BTW, you are not missing much on Connect. After I reported the problems with my beta token I got the standard "What version are you using?" and other questions but not really any kind of solution. I had to take the bull by the horns (so to speak) and figure it out on my own.

 

Your connect works? How? Mine just says 'guest' after logon...

 

It works fine here with a "Welcome midway40". I just noticed that they have "closed" my case.

Sometimes when I go to the OC forum it tells me that that I am signed in (the button says sign off) but I am not. The only way to fix this is to clear cookies.

 

How often does the beta 2.5 update??

 

At least once a day. It is hard to tell since they do not keep a log of the time intervals of these updates. All you know that it was updated today.

 

Thanks

I cant say i have ever noticed it update, guess i`ll keep a check on the definition version then. 1.31.9148.0

 

If you click on settings in the GUI and then go to logging, check advanced firewall logging and then open the log, you will see it scans for updates every hour. It isn't clear in the log when it updates but I have been watching it over several weeks and it seems to update at least once and sometimes twice a day.

Interestingly, the update numbers are the same as those posted on the Microsoft Malware Protection site for Defender and Forefront Client Security. Except those manual updates change sometimes three and four times a day.

OneCare seems update several hours behind when an update first appears for Defender. OneCare also skips maybe half of the daily update numbers posted on the Malware Protection site.

 

Thanks for your observations, reldel

I looked at my logs and in fact it shows that yesterday evening there was two updates within a little over an hour:

 

It has been 3 days now since the last definition update.
If oncare is going to be taken seriously then it needs to make its update frequency a bigger priority.

 

Yeah, just noticed that myself. I might go over on Connect and report this.

 

Somebody had already beaten me to it and posted about the update frequency.

Tony, did you reply to the post on there? It is almost word-for-word for what you just posted, lol.

 

Yeah, that was me lol.

 

I added that thread to my watch list to see when MS responds.