Aptann 1 Posted February 9, 2014 Posted February 9, 2014 A couple of months ago the firewall started misbehaving. I'm not sure if it was an update to Smart Security or the upgrade to Windows 8.1(from 8) that caused it. I've confirmed that it's the firewall causing it though, turning it off makes the problem go away. The problem is that processes will seemingly at random stop responding to internet related tasks. The process will act as if there's a working connection, but it gets stuck doing whatever it was trying to do. So for example if a program needs to get information from a website, it'll say it's getting the information indefinitely, without any timeout when there's supposed to be one. Basically, it's as if the connection is frozen. When closed, the process will remain in the background, and attempts to kill the process is met with "Access is denied". The only way to get rid of the process is to restart the computer. It's not a permission problem, I've been ruled out. It's also not any specific process, it can happen to anything that attempts to access the internet. I have formatted(for unrelated reasons), and re-installed Smart Security recently without any luck. I have contacted Eset about this, and was instructed to turn off firewall features and see if it would stop. The problem with that is that these problems can be far and few between, sometimes taking a whole day before I notice that something's gotten stuck, so that'd take too long to test out. I will do it, of course, but I was hoping perhaps someone else could shed some light on this issue before I delve into it. I did some Googling when this first started, and my findings suggested it could be related to the firewall failing something in the kernel.
Administrators Marcos 5,742 Posted February 9, 2014 Administrators Posted February 9, 2014 Does adding these applications to the exclusion list under Network -> Personal firewall -> Application modification detection help? Alternatively you can try disabling this feature.
Aptann 1 Posted February 9, 2014 Author Posted February 9, 2014 Unless that option would affect programs that haven't been modified then I don't think it'll make much of a difference. I'll try disabling the feature though. Can take a couple of hours before I get results.
Administrators Marcos 5,742 Posted February 9, 2014 Administrators Posted February 9, 2014 You could also try uninstalling ESS and installing the latest version from scratch while using default settings.
Aptann 1 Posted February 9, 2014 Author Posted February 9, 2014 I did a re-install yesterday, which gave me a newer version. Disabling application modification detection didn't help, it's still happening.
Arakasi 549 Posted February 9, 2014 Posted February 9, 2014 Does switching the Filtering mode to Automatic or Learning mode make a difference either ? Or maybe an Uninstall with the uninstaller in safe mode, then retry installation could be another stage in attempt to resolve.
Aptann 1 Posted February 10, 2014 Author Posted February 10, 2014 Automatic and learning modes makes no difference on the problem. I have also formatted(unrelated reason) and re-installed Windows after this problem started happening, which didn't help. I'll give a safe mode re-install a try though.
Aptann 1 Posted February 10, 2014 Author Posted February 10, 2014 Safe mode re-install did not work either.
Arakasi 549 Posted February 14, 2014 Posted February 14, 2014 Try Disabling Hips, restart the machine, and continue so forth to see if the problems persist with your apps with HIPS disabled. Let us know if they still freeze up permanently.
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