pianoman1949

Hi, folks. I am humbly requesting your help with a question that has been driving me crazy for years.

I have a clean install of Windows 2000 with Norton System Works and Personal Firewall. I did one successful Live Update, but the second LU failed, complaining that it couldn't connect to the internet (LU 1814, I think).

The conection is being blocked by the firewall. The event log says:
"No logged-in account. Default action is to "block".

This crops up every so often, and I have researched it to death and have been unable to find out what it means (and therefore what to do about it). I do not explicitly "log in" to any Norton product, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that there is some sort of login process going on behind the scenes.

I also have a vague recollection of clearing out some data file, but that may have been to solve a different issue. Can't find my notes.

I created an outbound TCP firewall "permit" rule specifically for the Live Update URL, and that worked. The next day it didn't work.

I assumed that all internet access was being blocked, but I later I discovered that ping and the web browser are working (haven't tried email yet). Perhaps it's just a Live Update problem.

I don't get it. Can anyone shed any light on this?

Thanks,
Ted

PurpleSky

I would uninstall/reinstall. Somethings might have went wrong during the installation.

**Also I wouldnt try so hard to get something work if it was normally sopposed to start working under normal circumstances.

pianoman1949

Thanks for responding.

I have actually already done that. In fact, it's so hard to get rid of all traces of Norton that I wipe the HDD clean and start over.

?? I'm not sure what you mean by that ?? If software doesn't "work right", there's a logical explanation somewhere.

Thanks

PurpleSky

I hear you. Why dont you try using symentec removal tool ? it is a fairly better way to uninstall symentec products. link provided below.

edit :read this also

pianoman1949

Thanks very much for your time and thought.

I have done that too. It still misses some files and registry keys. Starting over really isn't that big a deal. It's the only way one can be sure that the installation is clean.

But that doesn't really answer the question.

Sorry, doesn't help. There is nothing wrong with LiveUpdate, and there is nothing wrong with the Internet connection.

Thanks

pianoman1949

Mystery solved ... somewhat. Once again I have been pigheaded and afflicted with tunnel vision.

Deleting nisum.dat didn't help.

In response to some prodding from folks in another forum (and aginst my ha-ha "better judgement"), I focused on "Internet Access Control" in NPF, the place that determines what the firewall is supposed to do when each application tries to access the internet.

Then I carefully read the detail of the event log blocking message and noted the actual path and program name that was trying to get through the firewall. I don't have it in front of me now, but I think it was something like "c:\Program Files\Symantec\LUComserver_6_2.exe".

The problem with Norton is it's not just one big monolithic glob, but a whole collection of applications, listed by a generic name. And sometimes it's not clear to the lay person which one is which. I tried to find a "properties" in the application list to tell me which actual path/program goes with which generic name, but couldn't.

So I tried to do an add for LUComserver_6_2.exe, expecting it to complain about a duplicate, and ... lo and behold ... it worked! And the problem went away !!

So Live Update was MISSING from the internet access application list !! grrrrrrr.

And my conclusion is forced to be:

That message in the event log "no logged-in account. Default action is to block communications" is my NPF's way of saying "hey dummy, you forgot to add this program to the application list in Internet Access Control".

I was also told:
This is exactly what I expected too, but it didn't happen that way. The Alert Tracker showed that the program was trying to access the internet, and then it just died. Each application reacted in its own way but they all did what they would do if the Ethernet cable had fallen out of the back.

For some reason, the automatic application scan when I installed NPF on my friend's computer didn't pick up all the pieces of Norton. This explains why we had the problem on his computer but never on mine, I guess.

Thanks for your patience. grrrr, can't believe now much time I wasted on this.

PurpleSky

wow :) congratz figuring it out. And thanks for sharing.