In his unrelenting quest to discover the TOP freeware tools, Tony wrote in with his latest top freeware find. Thanks Tony.
Bill had mentioned to me that he'd had some problems with an installation of Comodo. I asked him for the story, and he gave it to me. It's a bit long, but how can a geek resist ...
Never Trust A Naked Activation Code
I have neither the skill nor the knowledge to determine whether or not Comodo Firewall Pro (formerly Comodo Personal Firewall) is an effective security device or not. I do, however, have an abundance of experience with Comodo and its support services.
Comodo Personal Firewall (CPF) installed without problems on my computer and was exceedingly user friendly for a few days. After installation, you used an application code to activate the program (more correctly, to validate it). The code was emailed to users after each download of the program. It worked perfectly.
When I installed the same program on my wife’s computer (from her computer, but having sent the file across our internal network), I naively tried to use my own activation code on her application. I have no idea how a whole septic tank managed to empty itself into my face from of that huge fan.
Seeing that my activation code would not work on my wife’s computer, I downloaded the program again to milady’s machine and received a second activation code. I never got the chance to dig that code out from the detritus.
Meanwhile, Comodo put out the new Comodo Firewall Pro (v2.4), still free, but with a sexier moniker (geekdom has its own concept of sexy). I uninstalled CPF from my computer successfully, then installed the new Comodo Firewall Pro (CFP). Another stunningly successful install!
Surely removing whatever had lodged itself in my wife’s computer from CPF would be relatively easy to remove, so I went to work. Over three days and 30 hours of work and learning later, I was successful.
CPF was in my wife’s computer and "live" so far as I could tell. But Windows refused to acknowledge its presence in Add/Remove or Start/Programs, the usual places where one would look to find an uninstall file. And the places that several emails from Comodo support staff directed me to look and remove whatever was there.
Finally one directed me to the Comodo forums where a newbie can find hundreds of requests from panicky CPF users who had managed to screw something up in installation or removal (often both, it seemed). Most of the posts about these problems dated to the middle of 2006, so I felt little hope that anyone still cared about old threads.
I signed up for the forums, found what I believed to be the best place to post my sad story and request for help. Just as my email requests for help were all answered within a couple of hours (including one early on a Sunday morning), I received a reply from a support person in the forum within an hour.
The first thing he did was to welcome me to the Comodo forums. (Didn’t I feel special! These guys have the right idea.)
Then, step by step, he guided me through the process of determining where Comodo Personal Firewall had lodged itself in the computer-gone-wonky. Sorting my way through some geekspeak (easier to do when you need translation to get the job done), I followed the instructions to remove the file known as fwconfig. After that, I was told it would be easy to simply delete the rest of the files in the drive where CPF had been installed.
But no. The files were still "in use" by the application.
With sleight of hand manoeuvres in the next forum message, Little Mac directed me to Services to disable the firewall service and driver. And away the rest of the files went from the installation drive.
As the internet was extraordinarily slow for the next several hours, I followed old forum messages I had printed out for deleting registry entries where the word "Comodo" appeared. I was not brave enough to delete whole folders in the registry because it seemed risky since some subfolders had data from other applications. I’m adventurous, but not foolhardy.
I got enough Comodo registry entries out that only Comodo Network Engine was still active and unremovable in the registry. Yet the new program would still not install because it recognized that the old program was still running. Only a few registry entries remained, but Windows told me "you can’t get there from here."
In the final instruction post to the forum, Little Mac directed me to Device Manager where with a few very specific moves I was able to deactivate the offending tentacles. After that, deleting the remaining registry entries should be easy.
But no. After rebooting, sizzling and dancing a few jigs, I returned to Device Manager to see if the engines there were indeed disabled. They were.
Then I resorted to a computer user’s best friend—the right click menu. Lo and behold, it offered to delete the engine entries. And away each of them went, in turn.
Minutes later, the computer was peacefully running Comodo Firewall Pro, with all cylinders humming like kittens.
Comodo is a novice firewall user’s dream. The old activation code (which should never be installed on any application because they give no end of grief in every program they are ever used in) is gone in favour of a validation that happens automatically when the user goes online after installation.
Comodo is easy to use, is not intrusive and receives wonderful praise from thousands of happy users.
I must give due praise and thanks to the Comodo support staff. They were on top of everything I tried to do, giving guidance along the way. No advice is perfect in the support business, but those guys came close.
The first time I had ever done surgery on a registry, I got down as deep as the Device Manager, did the job, deleted registry entries from there, yet still got out with my skin and my self respect intact, thanks to Comodo support.
The only thing the whole experience cost me was my time. At that, the ROI was worth the price of 30 hours.
Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems,' a book about real and inexpensive solutions to community problems most people think are inevitable evils of modern society. They aren't. We just have to look in the right place.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Contact author Bill Allin at turningitaround@sympatico.ca