Norton Internet Security conflicts

Uh, hey-- what the heck is with the <random integer>.exe SL update files? Is there some HUGE problem with giving them a standard name? 'Cause... you know... some of us are actually responsible network users and have firewalls, here.

And some of those firewalls' prompt windows (An application is attempting to access the internet, permit/block/manually configure?) get frozen up due to some strange conflict with the SL updater program, so the only way I can actually download the update is to turn off my firewall.

Not. Good. Folks.

My school network is horribly infected. I would really appreciate it if I didn't have to expose myself to it for the brief time it takes for the SL updater to do its thing, because it takes a lot longer than that to run the deep system scan on an 80gb hard drive that follows. (This isn't paranoia, it's justified caution. The stories I could tell...)

So, yeah. WinXP Pro + Norton Internet Security 2003 + SL's Randomly Generated Update Files (which incidentally look one heck of a lot like the randomly generated file names used by a lot of viruses) = Very Bad Thing.

Thanks.

It sounds like most of the problem is that the updater breaks your security program, as opposed to the temporary file name generation (we do that to avoid overwriting temp files from other applications... admittedly, we could probably select a temp name that was a little more descriptive).

What's strange about that is that the updater is just using a standard Windows API for network access (wininet, for the technically curious), and so shouldn't blow up Norton, or any of the other personal system security applications.

An easy workaround (if you don't want to temporarily turn off your security software), is to simply download the client from the secondlife.com website; it's the same installer.

It isn't so much the random filename itself, as it is the fact that the random filename exacerbates the problem to a (so far as I can see) unnecessary degree. With a set filename, I can just tell Norton to allow that file to access the internet whenever it wants to. Problem solved -- I set the configuration manually and voila, no popup, no frozen windows. When I have no idea what the filename will be this time, I have no way of doing that, and have to put up with the frozen pop-up.

Yeah, I've been going through the website up 'till now, but it seems strange that it should be having the problem at all, you know? SL is the only program I have ever had this problem with.

Let me see if I understand what's happening to you:

You Run Second Life.

SL notices that you need an update.

Updater launches.

Norton now tries to intercept the updater, and fails in an interesting and spectacular way.

If Norton isn't running, everything works okay.

In addition, you can't just tell Norton to let the darn thing run, because the updater runs as a temp file with a wierd name that changes every time, and so Norton prompts you every time.

Is this an accurate description of the problem?

Gail, I am running Norton Internet Security too, and the only alert I receive is when the Installer tries to access the net. Once I authorise it, I have no other problems.

Here are the settings I am using. Maybe you can compare and see if you missed one.

Personal Firewall Tab - Medium

Program Control Tab - the following are set to Permit All; Newview, Newview_1 and Newview.exe (two of these)

Workgroup Networking Tab - the following address ranges have been to the Trusted Zone; 63.211.139.1 - 254 and 63.211.151.1 - 254

I hope this helps, I know when I first started using SL, my Norton was doing some weird things too.

Good luck,

-TK

Tracy, you can safely remove the range 63.211.139.1 - 254 from your trusted zone, if you want. That's our old IP range, which we no longer use.

That's the size of it, Mark. Although I don't know about 'spectacular' -- the notification window pops up, and the pull-down window (Allow/Block/Manually Configure) is set to 'block' by default. When I click the little arrow to bring down the rest of the pull-down window, the Norton window freezes up and does not respond to mouse clicks; I have to 'end task' to get rid of it, which also kills the updater. Hotkeys (tab, down-arrow, enter) don't appear to work at all, although the window doesn't freeze on these attempts, just doesn't respond to them.

Unfortunately, that computer is in storage now (*bangs head against wall*) so now I have a choice between a desktop with a nonsupported but functional video card and a notebook with a (possibly? didn't get notification to the contrary) supported but nonfunctional video card, but both are also running NIS, so I'll see if the problem happens again here.

For the record, the computer that was having the issues was:
Athlon 2200+, GeForce4 ti4600, 512 meg of RAM, Windows XP Professional, NIS 2003 (latest update).

Edit-- and thanks, Tracy, if I have the same problems on these computers I'll have to give that a try.

Yeah try marking the IP ranges as trusted.

I have been using NPFW 2002 with SL since April, without major issues, thru version v1.0.2 of SL.

After updating to v1.0.3, I cannot connect to SL without disabling NPFW first and leaving it disabled while I'm in-world. Settings haven't changed for NPFW - set to "Allow All" for SL.

Anyone have any thoughts? I'm a bit leery of turning off NPFW for such extended periods of time while I'm in-world.

=SV

The IP address of Second Life's login server changed between 1.0.2 and 1.0.3. Just a guess, but I'd bet that NPFW is incorrectly blocking the login connection. (Although, it would be helpful if you can describe what happens with NPFW enabled, as specificially as possible).

Try removing the SL permission from NPFW, and then re-adding it.

Did just that for a short time last night. Not enough to really give many details at this point, but did note some behavior:

While in-world, re-enabled NPFW and noticed:

* that I didn't seem to be getting movement updates from the avatars around me, like the same animations were repeating themselves
* there was no chat being displayed (at a busy event).
* I found that I could face in different directions but I didn't try other movement or focusing on objects that I can specifically recall details about

After I disabled the NPFW again, I received what appeared to be chat updates coming in more quickly than normal, as if they were cached somewhere, for a short time (30-60 seconds).

I can try tonight and provide more detail. I also had not tried removing and reenabling permissions for SL within NPFW; I'l give that a shot.

=SV

Bump. Removing and re-enabling permissions within Norton Personal Firewall 2002 did not solve the problem - still need to "disable" NPF to access SL.

Muy malo. The worms are out there hunting me even now...

=SV

I don't suppose that it tells you why it doesn't work? I mean, is Norton blocking the https login request, the UDP traffic, our IP range?

If you can post anything that it's telling you about why Second Life doesn't work, that would be very helpful. From your previous post, it sounds like Norton is blocking all UDP traffic; if you can tell it to allow UDP traffic for Second Life, that might help.

The only feedback I received was from the SL interface, indicating "Unable to connect to Second Life". NPF did not report anything past "...newview is attempting to connect to the Internet", which is a normal message if you have such notification set up.

I had the SecondLife executable configured as "allow all" traffic, assigned both at the time of the initial attempt to contact (just post-install), and then explicitly allowing all access after removing all access as suggested in a previous post.

I browsed through the support forums on Symantec looking for related issues. While I found nothing that was immediately helpful, I did locate info on modifying general settings for NPF and creating a "custom rule" - different from the custom application handling - which allows you to customize traffic to and/or from a domain or IP address/range. After some trial and error, I have created a rule which has resolved the problem. (I will post the details later.)

=SV