Robert Posted November 23, 2007 Share Posted November 23, 2007 (edited) I have a dual boot XP and XP system. One is pretty clean and the other has a couple of years of use. At startup it has a boot screen that allows me to choose which XP system I want to boot into.So I am in the clean system and update to V3. It starts by uninstalling the old version then asks to reboot.When it reboots instead of the boot screen I got a completely blank screen until the User sign on screen pops up in the later part of the booting. Then after finishing booting up and there was no notice that I needed to complete the install, so I clicked on the install program again and it installed. Then reboot and the same blank screen problem. So I uninstalled Comodo and same thing happens. So I did a system restore to yesterday date and the same thing happens. What the heck did the Comodo do in the uninstall or install that could cause a blank screen until the user sign on screen even after a system restore?Does it change something in the master boot record that even system restore cannot fix?I really need my boot screen back. Edited November 23, 2007 by Robert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kkehoe Posted November 23, 2007 Share Posted November 23, 2007 I don't know that program, but it sounds like it nuked the BOOT.INI file. Do you have a "normal" XP CD, that is, not a recovery/restore/etc CD. The following article shows how to rebuild the BOOT.INI file:http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/330184The article refers to an error that you're not getting, but I think the resolution is the same. In the absence of a BOOT.INI, NTLDR will look in 2 places for a valid Windows install - C:\WINDOWS and C:\WINNT. If it finds one, the boot process continues, but of course you can only boot that one installation.Since your system is still bootable, I would seriously consider a data backup before trying a recovery of this nature.KevinP.S. System Restore will not help with this sort of a problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guitar Man Posted November 23, 2007 Share Posted November 23, 2007 Why the rush ?Version 3 was just released this week as a beta. There are known bugs. As important a program that a software firewall is, I would never recommend installing this before it's final version is ready, even less on a production machine. Of course, it's a bit late in warning you about this. Unless someone else discovers a way to reverse this mess, you're looking at a repair install or removing the corrupted OS install source. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted November 23, 2007 Author Share Posted November 23, 2007 I got a popup from the firewall saying there was an update. It never said it was a beta. I tried a different video card and it seems to work fine with that, so maybe it's a video card issue. Could Comodo somehow nuke the first video cards initial sync settings or mess with the motherboard Bios? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guitar Man Posted November 23, 2007 Share Posted November 23, 2007 I read somewhere this week that it was a beta version. I could have been mistaken. But I also read that there were some issues with this latest release, and that existing users should wait a few weeks before updating.That being said, there is a section devoted to version 3's issues at Comodo's forum here.HTH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goretsky Posted November 23, 2007 Share Posted November 23, 2007 Hello,Have you checked with Comodo's technical support department to see if this is a known issue and if they have some sort of work-around available to resolve the issue?Regards,Aryeh Goretsky Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted November 23, 2007 Author Share Posted November 23, 2007 This gets interesting.My video card has two monitor plugs. I only use a CRT monitor. I added an LCD monitor on the second plug and upon bootup it would show the boot messages and initial Windows screens. The CRT would be blank and flashing the no sync message.Then when it got to the Windows User Sign on screen the LCD would blink off with the no sync message and the CRT would blink on.I tried switching monitors and plugs and the above behavior would occur even when swapped. The LCD would get the boot screen no matter which plug it was in like it was following it. That's what I call a clue.I un-installed the video card and Nvidia drivers from both of the dual boot XP setups, removed the LCD monitor so it could not interfere, and I'm back to normal. I just have to reinstall the video card drivers and nvidia program now.Curiously the only way to un-install the nvidia program was to use the install disk that came with the card. It's not listed in Add/Remove programs or the program menu.My theory is the Nvidia program writes some sort of message to the video card (bios on the card?) which controls it immediately upon the computer booting. Somehow the Comodo unistall procedure corrupted those settings causing all these problems and making it look like the video card had gone bad. There went the evening Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Citadel80 Posted November 23, 2007 Share Posted November 23, 2007 Robert,I feel your pain. I was under the impression that Comodo 3 Final was going to be a few more weeks or months. Then on Wednesday I saw info about it going final and I downloaded it and installed it. My internet connection kept getting cut off, so I did an uninstall and cleaned the registry manually then I re-installed it. Same problem as before. I went back to Comodo 2.4!I think they rushed Comodo 3 too quick because many people are having problems. Comodo may say it is a final but for all intents and purposes it is still in beta. Whatever goodwill they had they have pi*ssed away quickly!I started using Comodo because of Scot's Newsletter. I want to see what he has to say in the coming months.I feel for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted November 23, 2007 Author Share Posted November 23, 2007 The re-install of the video card went fine last night. On the clean XP setup I'm leaving the Windows firewall for now. On the old XP setup the older version of Comodo remains. Then this morning an update message for it pops up Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lewmur Posted November 23, 2007 Share Posted November 23, 2007 (edited) The re-install of the video card went fine last night. On the clean XP setup I'm leaving the Windows firewall for now. On the old XP setup the older version of Comodo remains. Then this morning an update message for it pops up I think what happened is that you panicked and that the video card had nothing to do with anything. What actually happened is that the install temporarily renamed the boot.ini file so that you would be forced to boot into the XP version that was being updated.That may have required more than one reboot. When it was completely finished, it restored the boot.ini file. That just happened to be when you tried the dual monitors. The behavior you described with the monitors sounds normal to me. If your video card supports dual monitors then they have to be setup in both versions of XP. Edited November 23, 2007 by lewmur Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted November 23, 2007 Author Share Posted November 23, 2007 One of the things I did during testing was remove the hard drive cables. I didn't get any booting text from the Bios. So I popped in a different video card and that worked fine. Then I put the first video card back in and it didn't display text. Then I swapped which monitor plug I plugged into, and then finally added a second monitor. It was a long drawn out process. Whatever Comodo did went beyond modifying files on the hard drive. It changed settings on the video card itself.The video card model is: EVGA 512-P2-N775-AR GeForce 8600GTS Superclocked 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lewmur Posted November 23, 2007 Share Posted November 23, 2007 One of the things I did during testing was remove the hard drive cables. I didn't get any booting text from the Bios. So I popped in a different video card and that worked fine. Then I put the first video card back in and it didn't display text. Then I swapped which monitor plug I plugged into, and then finally added a second monitor. It was a long drawn out process. Whatever Comodo did went beyond modifying files on the hard drive. It changed settings on the video card itself.The video card model is: EVGA 512-P2-N775-AR GeForce 8600GTS Superclocked 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16I'm sorry but neither the video card nor the bios have a thing to do with the boot screen. That is controlled strictly by the boot.ini file in the root directory of the first drive on the system. Except for the fact that you can change what the first drive is in the bios. IOW, you can select ide1 as the drive to boot instead of ide0. By changing the drives you changed boot.ini files. Now as to the "text" displayed by the video cards, that is POST data and not the boot menu. It is quite possible that a video card could fail to show that text but the firewall software would have nothing to do with it. There is no software whatever that has even been loaded at that time. That text is in the bios firmware that can not be changed by any software other than flash bios writers. No firewall program would do that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goretsky Posted November 24, 2007 Share Posted November 24, 2007 Hello,I believe Comodo released a new version of their firewall software today, however, I cannot find the release notes for it on their web site. Perhaps they contain some additonal information which might relate to the problem you experienced.Regards,Aryeh Goretsky Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 Personally, I would uninstall the version 3 entirely until further testing with a larger base can be done and go back to v2 that you know works fine with the system until then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
onDvine Posted November 26, 2007 Share Posted November 26, 2007 I got a popup from the firewall saying there was an update. It never said it was a beta. ...Me, too. And a beta should not have been offered in that way. I did what LilBambi suggested and am glad to have the older version back in place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed_P Posted November 26, 2007 Share Posted November 26, 2007 Me, too. And a beta should not have been offered in that way. According to this announcement released on Nov 20th it's not a beta.However, when I got the popup informing me of the upgrade I declined it. Later that day when I clicked on the CFW's Update link it informed me that vs 3.0 was available. I again declined the upgrade.Yesterday and today however when I check for the upgrade CFW returns that there is none available.An interesting chain of events. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
onDvine Posted November 26, 2007 Share Posted November 26, 2007 ... when I check for the upgrade CFW returns that there is none available. ...It's not offering an update to v3 here now, either. And it did offer it to me again later last Friday, after I'd reinstalled v2.4. ... An interesting chain of events.Very. Maybe somebody screwed up and it was released prematurely? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed_P Posted November 28, 2007 Share Posted November 28, 2007 (edited) There are some problems acknowledged and some fixes shown here: http://forums.comodo.com/help_for_v3/upgra...s-t15540.0.htmlBTW What version of 2.4 are you running? I find that I'm on 2.4.19.185. Edited November 28, 2007 by EdP Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
onDvine Posted November 28, 2007 Share Posted November 28, 2007 ... BTW What version of 2.4 are you running? I find that I'm on 2.4.19.185.Thanks, Ed. :)It's interesting that you have a later version. I installed v2.4.18.184 in September (just over 2 months ago) and reinstalled it from my DLs folder. Comodo didn't show me any notifications about new/updated versions prior to the pop-up window for v3 last week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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