In serious trouble with Comodo Firewall Pro 3

Yesterday my Comodo Firewall (version 2.4) alerted me that there was a new update for the software. Until know I was very happy with this free (lifetime) software package, until I updated the software…

It upgraded itself to Comodo Firewall Pro 3 (firewall software PLUS new intrusion detection software). Great I thought and during installation it asked if I wanted to set it to, for instance “learning” mode. I liked this in the former version, so I did it again. After a reboot, hell broke loose.

The learning mode, I think it was for the “defender” part, checked really everything (and I mean everything). Every click I made, every sub call that was done (and I guess for all sub calls to sub processes as well). Maybe it was a combination of things, like buffer overflow detection / protective mode from my Windows XP SP2 machine or McAfee buffer overflow stuff. I don’t know. My system froze immediately. Nothing was responsive.

After rebooting, pressing F8 during restart and choosing for the last good known configuration Windows mode, it froze again during startup. It froze during startup in safe mode on a bus driver. It froze up in everything I tried ,to circumvent, the startup of the Comodo software. After a while I managed again, with a lot of patience, and really fast timed pressing on buttons, etc. to get in Windows again.

The stupid thing was that it even started to block its own software (so also the “uninstall” option). The windows service for Comodo had only the possibility to disable the service, I was not allowed (all grayed out) to stop it. In the end disabling the service did the trick (as said with a lot of patience and precise fast timing). I guess it froze the machine in all its actions, probably due to running CPU overtime / checking (ehhh learning…). Forgive me that I didn’t check.

You can imagine that after things worked a little again, the first thing I did was send my almost (only copy) ready presentation for UKOUG to 3 different email accounts.

Whoa, hopefully this won’t happen again for a while…

🙁

Update

Guess what, I downgraded to the former version.