tracert does not work correctly

[Guest]

I recently noticed that tracert (the DOS command that allows to trace the
route between the computer and another one on the Internet) does not work
anymore correctly on my VISTA machine.

When launched, tracert does not trace the route but simply seems to ping the
computer and no inforation is displaye as to the path followed.

For example, for a short route to my ISP, tracert on my XP machine will show
5 hops (starting from my ADSL router and going through 3 relays between my
router and my ISP), whereas the same command on my VISTA machine will only
show the last hop (the target machine).

I know tracert worked correctly before installing ZoneAlarm and a few MS
updates, since I used it to check the route from various ISP when travelling.


Has anyone seen this and could it be traced to Zone Alarm ? Yet, the
problem persists if I unload ZASS, but I wonder whether this definitely
rules ZASS as the culprit. I indeed noticed that the installation of
ZoneAlarm included the installation of new drivers which may have changed the
way tracert works and are not unloaded when unloading ZASS.

This is not a critical problem but is annoying since it doe snot allow me to
check easily the change of route when starting my VPN.

 

[Andrew McLaren]

Hey Paul,

I dunno anything about Zone Alarm, but ... I just tried a tracert from my
Vista desktop machine, and it looks and behaves exactly the same as always,
with number of hops, each hop on a separate row and milliseconds per ICMP.
This machine is patched with all current Microsoft Vista hotfixes.

So, it sounds like the problem you're seeing is particular to your machine;
not a universal change in Vista.

Not having seen the problem, I dunno for sure how to fix it ... but the
first thing I'd check is that I only have one copy of tracert.exe on the
machine. Possibly Zone Alarm installed its own EXE file, and left it behind
when it was uninstalled? Do:
C:\>dir tracert.* /s
and see what shows up. The "genuine" file should be
C:\Windows\System32\Tracert.exe. Check the file properties in Explorer
(right-click, Properties, Details) and make sure the file was published by
Microsoft, and has the Vista product name.

Other folks may have extra info for you; I hope this helps a bit anyway.

Andrew

 

[Michael]

For what its worth, my system tracert shows 8 hops to verizon.net (my isp)
and seems to be correct (or at least reasonable).
All MS updates current, use AVG as virus scanner, hardware (router) firewall
and windows firewall running. No Zone alarm.
You might have to uninstall Zone alarm to test - often just turning things
off still leaves drivers and such running even if the program itself seems
to be off. (You mention unloading, not sure if that meant uninstalling).

Michael
Vista home premium