Auto/Main update not working

[Cindy]

I've been posting for a few days and can't get a response
from whomever is fielding questions. Can someone please
post a reply, following the thread of questions I had from
about 1 week ago (see below)? Thank you very much, in
advance!
Cindy


Mikolaj,
Thank you for the 2nd suggestion re. my problems with the
updater failing and indicating "could not connect to the
internet". Unfortunately, that didn't work either. I
checked the norton firewall settings and it is set
to "permit all" for the "GiantAntispywareupdater.exe". Any
other suggestions besides the firewall settings and making
sure IE is not set to run offline? Thanks very much for
your help and any other suggestions you might have!!
Regards,
Cindy

Subject: Re: Update function still not working, STILL
need assistance
From: "Mikolaj" <[email protected]> Sent: 8/5/2005
5:53:18 AM

I posted on Aug 3rd and haven't received a
reply/assistance. Please see the copied post below, and
please offer assistance. Thanks in advance,
Cindy


Mikolaj,
Thanks for your reply. I already verified that this was
not an issue, as I saw this fix for others. IE is
working "online". Any other ideas? Thanks again in
advance!
Cindy

Hi again,

have you checked the Norton Firewall settings if it is not
blocking access
to the internet for MSAS update process (i.e.
GiantAntiSpywareUpdater.exe) ?

--
Pozdrawiam serdecznie / Kind regards
Mikolaj Kaminski
MS-MVP, Poland

...


..

 

[bill sanderson]

-----Original Message-----
I've been posting for a few days and can't get a response
from whomever is fielding questions. Can someone please
post a reply, following the thread of questions I had from
about 1 week ago (see below)? Thank you very much, in
advance!
Cindy


Mikolaj,
Thank you for the 2nd suggestion re. my problems with the
updater failing and indicating "could not connect to the
internet". Unfortunately, that didn't work either. I
checked the norton firewall settings and it is set
to "permit all" for the "GiantAntispywareupdater.exe". Any
other suggestions besides the firewall settings and making
sure IE is not set to run offline? Thanks very much for
your help and any other suggestions you might have!!
Regards,
Cindy

Sorry about the missing response. This forum is staffed
purely by volunteers, and folks have varying energy at
times.

I'd still tend to strongly suspect a firewall or other
issue--perhaps some Internet security app blocking
spynet.com.

I'm working via the HTML interface now and can't easily
look at the whole original thread--I may be able to get
to that later tonight. what Norton product do you have
installed? Maybe others who are using that suite can say
what their experience has been.

This is a little difficult to give the right advice
about. I'm tempted to say restart in safe mode with
networking and/or shut down all Norton/symantec services
and startup items, but that might well leave you on the
Internet without a firewall.

Can you turn on the Windows firewall and set it to no
exceptions (assuming XP) and then turn Norton's firewall
off, for long enough to test updating?

 

[Cindy]

Bill,
Thank you SO much! My apologies on expecting a response
more quickly than might have been possible. I didn't
realize you guys were all volunteers. I assumed the
support was set up through the microsoft corp. Thank you
for all of your donated hours!

Your suggestions did the trick. I enabled the windows
firewall (since I'm running Norton Firewall and AV, I had
the Windows Firewall disabled), then enabled windows
firewall, tried the update on antispy and voila! it
worked. Thank you, thank you! From now on when I think
an update is needed, I'll just do the same thing. I tried
searching ad nauseum through the Norton Firewall rules to
see why it was blocking it, but it seems to be detecting
and labeling the microsoft antispyware as a trojan horse
and blocks it. I even allowed the first trojan horse that
it said it was (Back Orifice 2000) to monitor it, but when
I tried to manually update antispyware, it simply moved
onto the next trojan horse listed and labled antispyware
as this trojan horse and blocked it. Not sure if this is
just my system, if I have any bugs or spyware, or if it is
a glitch in the antispyware. Perhaps others could post if
they have had this problem. Nonetheless...THANK YOU
Bill!!!
Cindy

 

[Bill Sanderson]

Bill,
Thank you SO much! My apologies on expecting a response
more quickly than might have been possible. I didn't
realize you guys were all volunteers. I assumed the
support was set up through the microsoft corp. Thank you
for all of your donated hours!

Your suggestions did the trick. I enabled the windows
firewall (since I'm running Norton Firewall and AV, I had
the Windows Firewall disabled), then enabled windows
firewall, tried the update on antispy and voila! it
worked. Thank you, thank you! From now on when I think
an update is needed, I'll just do the same thing. I tried
searching ad nauseum through the Norton Firewall rules to
see why it was blocking it, but it seems to be detecting
and labeling the microsoft antispyware as a trojan horse
and blocks it. I even allowed the first trojan horse that
it said it was (Back Orifice 2000) to monitor it, but when
I tried to manually update antispyware, it simply moved
onto the next trojan horse listed and labled antispyware
as this trojan horse and blocked it. Not sure if this is
just my system, if I have any bugs or spyware, or if it is
a glitch in the antispyware. Perhaps others could post if
they have had this problem. Nonetheless...THANK YOU
Bill!!!
Cindy

You're welcome!

Glad you have a workaround. I am a bit concerned about the base issue,
though--there ought to be a way to enable this update to happen with Norton
in place, and you need to be absolutely certain that you don't have the
trojans in place that Norton is complaining about.

Is it the case that you can do full scans with both Microsoft Antispyware
and the Norton product involved, and come through clean?

 

[Mikolaj]

I've been posting for a few days and can't get a response

from whomever is fielding questions. Can someone please
post a reply, following the thread of questions I had from
about 1 week ago (see below)? Thank you very much, in
advance!
Cindy


Mikolaj,
Thank you for the 2nd suggestion re. my problems with the
updater failing and indicating "could not connect to the
internet". Unfortunately, that didn't work either. I
checked the norton firewall settings and it is set
to "permit all" for the "GiantAntispywareupdater.exe". Any
other suggestions besides the firewall settings and making
sure IE is not set to run offline? Thanks very much for
your help and any other suggestions you might have!!
Regards,
Cindy

Subject: Re: Update function still not working, STILL
need assistance

Hi again,

I am sorry for the lack of response from me, but Bill Sanderson excused me a
little bit - I am trying to help as volunteer and for free and not only
here, on this newsgroup. And really couldn't find enough time to manage all
that I wanted.. A day seems to have to few hours for me.. ;-)

As I see, the further assistance of Bill Sanderson helped finding the source
of the problem, i.e. Norton Firewall (so my suggestion about it was right).
What else can I say about this, is that for example the firewall I use, free
version of Zone Alarm, allows three MSAS processes to get the access to the
internet. These processes are:
gcasSWupdater.exe
GIANTAntiSpywareMain.exe
GIANTAntiSpywwareUpdater.exe
( I suppose the first one is responsible for the application to update
itself, third one for definitions update, and the main app for sending the
suspected spyware reports and maybe some other tasks - if I'm wrong then
I'll be glad to be corrected by anyone).

If you want to give Norton one more try - just check if you can give the
internet access for these three processes in the firewall rules. This may
allow you to use MSAS without switching between Norton and Windows
firewalls.

Concerning the possible trojans you and Bill Sanderson mentioned, I suggest
you would scan your computer in the safe mode using MSAS, antivirus (both
with up to date signatures, i.e. definition files) and some additional, but
helpful, applications.

So start the computer in the Safe mode (F8 during boot-up), run Windows
Explorer, go to your profile temporary folders (usually C:\Documents and
Settings\username\local settings\temp and c:\Documents and
Settings\username\local settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5) and
delete all the files in those directories and subdirectories. Then do a full
system scan with MS AntiSpyware (check the proper option under Scan
settings). Scan the computer with your Norton antivirus software. And also
with some other "cleaning" software such as:



Spybot Search&Destroy http://www.spybot.info/en/index.html

HijackThis http://www.tomcoyote.org/hjt/

CWShredder http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3019.html

Ad-Aware SE Personal http://www.lavasoft.com/software/adaware/

McAfee Stinger http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/



If you run HijackThis you can check the log it prepares - just copy and
paste it to the http://www.hijackthis.de web page and click analyze button.



Maybe this is some "overwork" and your system is clean, but it's better to
check twice and be sure..

 

[Cindy]

Bill,
Thank you very much for all of your helpful
recommendations. Yes, that is the case that I can run
microsoft antispyware and Norton Firewall, as well as Ad-
Aware Personal, Hijackthis, and a few other antispy
software programs with no spyware detected on my system.
I'll rerun some of the software on both of our PC's, that
are connected via a wireless network and see if anything
is found. Thanks again!
Cindy