VoodooShield discussion

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Hehehe, VS is all about locking the computer when it is at risk... and I have mentioned this sooooooo many times.

AutoPilot is fine, but my preference is to lock the computer when it is at risk.

In all fairness, have you not heard me say that the computer should be locked when it is at risk? .

I know that you mentioned that a couple of times
But I'm confused now...
What do you recommend for novice users (or in my case small children) autopilot or another mode?

 

[shmu26]

In all fairness, have you not heard me say that the computer should be locked when it is at risk? .

Absolutely true, Dan. But at the same time, I thought autopilot did an adequate job at that...

 

[paulderdash]

Cool, thank you, I will check it out!

Ok, I think I know what is up with VS not starting on startup.

The people who enter a password to log into their computer (when they start the computer), do not have this issue with VS 4.03b, right?

Right.

Auto-start and registration issues fixed here now with 4.03b.

 

[Antarctica]

Right.

Auto-start and registration issues fixed here now with 4.03b.

Same for me,working without any problems so far.
Thank you Dan for your hard work and dedication to your customers,you are truly amazing.

 

[codswollip]

Can confirm that logging out and logging in, gui auto-start occurs w/v4.03.

My default is no OS login required on boot.

 

[DotNet]

Registration & auto start is fixed with 4.03. Broken are the rules. Any new rule or edit to existing rules locks up the pc when the save button is pressed. Also vpn is popping up in voodoo & no matter how many times I click allow, no rule is created in smart or autopilot. User log has no activity for items being blocked. Going back to 4.02.

 

[Wolfsbane]

VS v4.03b rules are working for me. Did you do a clean install or upgrade over existing installation?

Edit: ran into registration issue again so this time I set the voodooshield-token.json to read-only so CCleaner doesn't dump it again.

Can anyone replicate my results? Delete the json file in %TEMP% and restart VoodooShield.

Settings are retained since they are stored in ProgramData.

 

[DotNet]

Unsure what happened but same issue now with 4.02. Restored a backup of PC & now 4.03 is fine.

 

[ColonelMal]

Dan,
After some testing I have found a problem on my system. I'm running Windows 10 Pro 64 bit and I use a toolbar utility called Powerpro (PowerPro). I notice that with all VS version 4 iterations the toolbar freezes and this affects my accessing other running programs as well as the toolbar itself. In actual fact I have to either exit VS or use Task Manager to close the toolbar program. Is there a solution to this problem which apparently appears in VS v.4.x but not in 3.59b?

 

[plat1098]

Can anyone replicate my results? Delete the json file in %TEMP% and restart VoodooShield.

Yes, absolutely! Me, I unchecked Temporary files under Windows/System in CCleaner so that VS .json isn't deleted, not too many temp files in AppData anyway.

Does anyone who hides the desktop gadget ever notice that when VS is disabled, the gadget appears on desktop showing "disabled" but is almost transparent? I find this to be a very cool feature. Also installed 4.03 over 4.02 w/no problem.

Edit: To add to above, deleting the VS .json manually and restarting VS will result, not only in the appearance of the registration box, but also will show VS as "disabled" on here.

 

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

VS v4.03b rules are working for me. Did you do a clean install or upgrade over existing installation?

Edit: ran into registration issue again so this time I set the voodooshield-token.json to read-only so CCleaner doesn't dump it again.

Can anyone replicate my results? Delete the json file in %TEMP% and restart VoodooShield.

Settings are retained since they are stored in ProgramData.

Great find i have set an exception in CCleaner for voodooshield-token.json so it won't be deleted.

 

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Yes, absolutely! Me, I unchecked Temporary files under Windows/System in CCleaner so that VS .json isn't deleted, not too many temp files in AppData anyway.

Does anyone who hides the desktop gadget ever notice that when VS is disabled, the gadget appears on desktop showing "disabled" but is almost transparent? I find this to be a very cool feature. Also installed 4.03 over 4.02 w/no problem.

Edit: To add to above, deleting the VS .json manually and restarting VS will result, not only in the appearance of the registration box, but also will show VS as "disabled" on here.

View attachment 167157

When doing a clean install of version 4.03 I get VS being disabled. I have to manually activate the chosen mode during setup.

I can't take a snapschot anymore I get this error message:

Will retry 3.59.

Edit: no such problems on 3.59.

 

[DotNet]

The rules or whitelisting is not working still. I added a "show hidden files" to explorer right click. Voodoo detects it & when I allow it the choice is not remembered. I then allowed it to deny as to get a user log entry and when I right click the "user blocked" entry & choose "whitelist item" crash.

 

[Rainwalker]

With 4.03 I am having basically the same problem I have been having having with 3.59 and 4.02, only worse. After installing with Admin Account ( 3.59 & 4.02 ) cannot get VS to load with Guest Account unless I Disable VS in Admin Account before switching. Must also Disable prior to switching back to Admin Account. With 4.03 cannot load VS at all into Guest Account. I have tried both over-the-top and clean. Back to 3.59 which I can live with and basically like. BTW... why does VS want a inbound TCP connection( 49159 ) and a ALL TCP connection. I have not allowed this until I know it is all OK.

 

[danb]

Yeah, there is nothing wrong with AutoPilot... it is great for some situations, and it would be really difficult to find something that can get through it, but it is not perfect.

I just personally believe that the computer should be locked as tight as possible when someone is doing something risky, like surfing the web or checking email.

Personally, for child's computers I would use Smart mode because it is the best of both worlds. In Smart mode, when VS is OFF, it behaves just like it does when it is on AutoPilot. But it also locks the computer when the child is doing something risky like browsing the web.

We added AutoPilot as an option for the users who wanted additional protection, but wanted to limit the frequency of user prompts to an absolute minimum. If you are also running a great AV with VS on AutoPilot, that is more than sufficient, but there are a lot of users (like myself), who only run VS, now that Windows 10 has become quite secure in its own right. In that case, I strongly believe the computer should be locked when it is at risk.

Thank you guys for letting me know about those bugs... I made quite a few changes to that part of the code in 4.03b, so it does not surprise me that there are a few bugs. They should be in the error reporting system, and they should be super easy to fix. The double type conversion bug should be extremely easy to find. Thank you guys!

 

[danb]

Ok, I just looked at all of the logs, and it looks like these 3 or so errors are caused by non-english regional settings or version of Windows.

Whoever is experiencing the types of errors posted above, can you please let me know what your Control Panel / Region settings are, or if you are using a non-english version of windows? Thank you!

 

[Rainwalker]

Dan, please speak to my TCP question....post 739.
Thank you

 

[danb]

With 4.03 I am having basically the same problem I have been having having with 3.59 and 4.02, only worse. After installing with Admin Account ( 3.59 & 4.02 ) cannot get VS to load with Guest Account unless I Disable VS in Admin Account before switching. Must also Disable prior to switching back to Admin Account. With 4.03 cannot load VS at all into Guest Account. I have tried both over-the-top and clean. Back to 3.59 which I can live with and basically like. BTW... why does VS want a inbound TCP connection( 49159 ) and a ALL TCP connection. I have not allowed this until I know it is all OK.

Cool, I have not debugged VS while running as a guest account yet, but it is now on my to do list.

As far as the port is concerned... I do not know that one off the top of my head, but I can assure you that if it is coming from VS, it is legitimate. For example, the communication code for VoodooAi came directly from code that Microsoft Azure supplied.

 

[danb]

The rules or whitelisting is not working still. I added a "show hidden files" to explorer right click. Voodoo detects it & when I allow it the choice is not remembered. I then allowed it to deny as to get a user log entry and when I right click the "user blocked" entry & choose "whitelist item" crash. View attachment 167159

Hmmm, interesting... thank you for letting me know! Can you please tell me the exact steps, so can can reproduce and fix this... including your method on how you added the show hidden files right click option?

 

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Ok, I just looked at all of the logs, and it looks like these 3 or so errors are caused by non-english regional settings or version of Windows.

Whoever is experiencing the types of errors posted above, can you please let me know what your Control Panel / Region settings are, or if you are using a non-english version of windows? Thank you!

Hi Dan i'm using a Dutch (Nederlands) version of Windows 10
With these region settings: