Threatfire seems to cause processes to hang during winlogon

[mrradish]

Hi,

I have had a search of the forum and cannot seem to find a topic on this already - Apologies if that is not the case.

I have been using Threatfire for 2 weeks when I acquired it along with the firewall product. I thought I would give it a go and have been impressed enough to consider using it as the main line of defense.

On Saturday the 31st May my PC started experiencing problems on boot and after a bit of digging it seemed that it was unable to create any new processes other than those earliest in the Winlogon process. So most services and explorer seemed ok but half the process started from the windows “run” registry key and "startup group” did not start. Of the processes that did manage to run and showed themselves in the system tray all were responsive except Threatfire which showed the tool tip “Threatfire Initiating”. The situation did not rectify itself if the PC was left in this state for 30 minutes and the only way to close the PC down was a hard reset. I have also discovered that the problem is intermittent with approximately 1 in 5 boot attempts being successful so it would indicate some sort of timing problem with windows process (I have disabled MacAfee as the main suspect but same problem)

As Threatfire seemed to be the culprit I have now managed to de-install it and all is well again although I would really like to get to the bottom of the problem and use Threatfire again.

I am using XP professional SP2 and bang uptodate with all hotfixes etc. I would be happy to provide any other information anybody from the technical team would require.

Cheers

Clive

[mjq424]

Hi
What McAfee program do you use? Are you using the latest versions of the firewall and ThreatFire?

Please note that Windows XP Service Pack 3 has now been released through Windows Update.

[mrradish]

The version of Mcafee is quite old (version 4.51) and could quite well be causing the conflict.

Both the firewall and Threatfire are uptodate and updated automatically.

Since the last post I re-installed Threatfire to see if the problem was still there and it was. Previously I had only disabled the system scan on McAfee but I additionally disabled the AVSync manager service and - fingers crossed - all processes have started normally the last 5-6 boots.

PS I am shying away from SP3 :eek: until MS have issued a few roll ups :rolleyes: .

Cheers

[roman8]

I seemed to have the same problem here running WinXP SP3 with Avira antivir PE, Spybot S&D and Spywareblaster. Once in a while during a cold boot my PC just freeze when it get to window with Threatfire not loading. A hard reset will fix this but i am puzzled why it's happened. At first i thought my HD is failing but after running chkdsk, recovery console and even a clean install of WinXP SP3 on another HD doesn't fix the problem at all.
The strange thing is i had the same sofware loaded on my 2 Vista Pcs ( desktop and laptop) and Threatfire has never hang at boot time :confused: :confused: :confused:
I did some researched on the Net and found that the reviewer at PcWorld also mentioned this problem with some pc setup. I haven't had to do a hard reset on my WinXP for 2 weeks now but the problem may come back.
Maybe the developer can fix this bug on the next update ??

[mjq424]

Hi
This could be a XP SP3 thing, various bugs have been identified in various blogs/websites.

[roman8]

Hi
This could be a XP SP3 thing, various bugs have been identified in various blogs/websites.

Thanks for the reply, but the problem happened more frequently on WinXP SP2. I've had only 1 or 2 instances of this after updating to SP3. Personally i think some processes in WinXP caused this behavior but i haven't been able to pin it down. For a supposedly stable OS it's very annoying when it happened though. I would've expect this sort of problem with Vista but it did not. I've never had this problem with either Vista or Vista SP1 which has the same utility apps installed like the ones in my WinXP pc.
Well, i hope the problem will go away eventually some day :) :)

[PC-Pete]

The version of Mcafee is quite old (version 4.51) and could quite well be causing the conflict.

Both the firewall and Threatfire are uptodate and updated automatically.

Since the last post I re-installed Threatfire to see if the problem was still there and it was. Previously I had only disabled the system scan on McAfee but I additionally disabled the AVSync manager service and - fingers crossed - all processes have started normally the last 5-6 boots.

PS I am shying away from SP3 :eek: until MS have issued a few roll ups :rolleyes: .

Cheers


Do you really mean McAfee 4.5.1?

It might be a good time to change your AV anyway. 4.5.1 wasn't fully XP compatible having been developed for Windows 95.

Minor issues with using McAfee VirusScan with Windows XP.
1. Fast user switching is not supported.
2. Squares appear on the menu prompts instead of letters during the installation.
So there could well be issues with many current XP programs. Also, virus definition support is supposed to finish at the end of this month.

[mrradish]

Thanks PC-Pete,

I have now de-installed Mcafee altogether so it can be removed from the equation - yes it was quite old but I had not had any problems with it previously. Lack of virus definitions is reason to move on tho ;).

The Threatfire issue still persists although it now seems to be less frequent. I am still trying to identify which process threatfire might be conflicting with and if I have any success I will post here.

[ebennett]

Thanks PC-Pete,

I have now de-installed Mcafee altogether so it can be removed from the equation - yes it was quite old but I had not had any problems with it previously. Lack of virus definitions is reason to move on tho ;).

The Threatfire issue still persists although it now seems to be less frequent. I am still trying to identify which process threatfire might be conflicting with and if I have any success I will post here.


Have you uninstalled ThreatFire and seen if this solved your issue? Also try reinstalling ThreatFire when your computer is in safe mode. Hit F8 before windows loads to select this option. See if this fixes it!

Ethan Bennett
PC Tools Tech Support/Qualit Assurance

[mrradish]

Have you uninstalled ThreatFire and seen if this solved your issue? Also try reinstalling ThreatFire when your computer is in safe mode. Hit F8 before windows loads to select this option. See if this fixes it!

Ethan Bennett
PC Tools Tech Support/Qualit Assurance

Hi Ethan,

As mentioned in the post that kicked off this thread - de-installing Threatfire resolves the issue.

I will try the "Safe Mode" install but I was wondering whether you could explain your thinking behind this action? Do you think that a rogue service or driver coud be conflicting?

Cheers

Clive