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Numerous Problems with SecureAnywhere and Mobile

  • 11 July 2012
  • 4 replies
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I purchased a 5 user license for SecureAnywhere Complete a few days ago. I have installed it on 5 PC's and one Droid Bionic.
 
3 of the PC's are Windows XP, 1 is Windows 7 32 Bit and the final is Windows 7 64 bit.
 
All 3 of the XP Boxes lose the ability to cut and paste. Rebooting fixes it for a while, but it happens again within 10 minutes. Shutting down Secure Anywhere fixes the problem immediately without reboot and it works fine until I restart Secure Anywhere. And it will happen again in a few minutes. It will come and go.
 
On the 32 Bit Windows 7 PC, the CPU stays neat 100% when I am using Chrome. The mouse movement becomes "sticky" and I end up shutting down Chrome and restarting it. Within 5 minutes with 3 or 4 tabs open, it happens again. I only have a couple of extentions. When I shut down SecureAnywhere, the CPU does not hit 100%.
 
On this same PC, the number keys change to arrow keys so the cursor jumps all over the screen when I try to enter numbers. The regular numbers over the letters work. I can turn Num Lock on and off a number of times and it eventually will behave like it should. It toggles on my screen correctly, just does not do what it is supposed to do. If I turn off Secure Anywhere, it returns to normal immediately.
 
This morning I was unable to get to any website on this same PC at all. I opened a DOS Window and sent a ping to a remote server across a VPN and it returned the ping just fine. I did a tracert to check on the DNS lookup and it worked correctly. I opened Firefox and had the same problem. I then tried IE8 and it worked fine. Retested Chrome and FireFox - still dead. I disabled Secure Anywhere and restarted Chrome again and it worked fine. Didn't try FireFox.
 
On the same Win7-32 PC I ran a program that I run every morning that I wrote to "scrape" information from several web sites to create a daily report. I wrote it in Visual Basic using Internet Explorer Automation. It navigates to a web page, logs into an account and then navigates to a report, saves the HTML to a variable and parses the data for the information I need. IT failed parsing the data, everything else was OK. I looked at the data that was failing and the sub-string I was looking for was in the data, but was "not found". Rebooted the PC and tried again. Failed. Disabled Secure Anywhere and tried again and it worked fine.
 
On my office XP machine, I had a blue screen this morning. All I did was open Chrome. I can't recall that happening on this PC ever before. Not sure if it is related or not, but I had to restart. I went to this web page to see if these problems were anywhere in this forum and I was unable to get into the forum. Web page unavailable. Restarted Chrome - same thing. Disabled WebRoot SA and got right in.
 
I installed the mobile version on my Droid Bionic. The Droid slowed down considerably. Not one of those things I noticed immediately, but over the last few days, it was taking a longer and longer time to open things. I also noticed that my navigation seemed to be stuck on "Searching for GPS" for several minutes. The last couple of days, on my daily jog I started my app "Smart Training" and I began my jog. I then let that run in the background and, as usual, hit the Home icon and opened Pandora. It took a couple of minutes for Pandora to load and begin playing, a lot longer than usual. At the end of my run, I end Pandora and press "stop" in Smart Training. I put the Mobile Security app on late last week and had this problem on Friday, I skipped my run Sat and Sun because of the heat and resumes Monday and Tuesday and Today. At the end of my run all 3 days, Smart Training had zero steps and zero miles, but it did mark the time. This morning, I started Smart Training and watches it as I ran. The GPS was not working and it was not tracking me. I restarted the droid and the app. No luck. I was beginning to think my Droid was malfunctioning. I tried to uninstall the Mobile Security App and apparently do not remember the password. I used a Task Manager and shut the Security App down and tried Smart Training again. It began working again just as it always has.
 
I know this is a long post, but there are a LOT of issues I have found with this product. As I type this now, I am not running any anti-virus software because I was unable to get to this web page. I have also had several emails that I have sent to people fail to actuallly reach them even though it seemed to successfully send on my end. I am not sure this is related at this point, but the other issues are definately issues with WebRoot SA and Mobile Security.
 
I am willing to work with you guys to resolve these problems, but if we can't resolve them pretty quickly I am going to have to ask for a refund and will return to the bloated AVG Free I was using.
 
Looking forward to your response.
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Best answer by JimM 11 July 2012, 18:05

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4 replies

Userlevel 7
Hi tjwhitejr,
 
That sounds like a mess, but I'm sure we can help you.
 
1. All 3 XP boxes cannot cut and paste.
 
That sounds like you probably cancelled the initial scan, the unfortunate result of which can be everything in the Identity Shield being set to Deny.  You'll want to go to Identity & Privacy -> View/Edit Protected Applications and change at least your browsers to a Protect state.  There may be other items in here that merit Protect or Allow as well.  If you want to list the items, I can help you in determining if they should be on Protect or Allow.  If you don't want to list the programs in a public area, we could move the ticket over to the support system.  That might end up being a more efficient way of dealing with some of the other listed issues in any case since we would be able to see some of the Webroot logs.  Those logs might end up being necessary to explain some of the behavior. 
 
If you do end up creating a support ticket, you will want to first reinstall Webroot (let the initial scan complete this time regardless of if you did or didn't let it complete last time), use IE to get to the support system (since it sounds like that browser is working for you), and make note in the ticket that the ticket is "for Jim specifically."  Then I will continue working it with you.  Due to the number of issues you are reporting and the fact they exist on different boxes, I will probably request logs separately from the different computers once we have this case in the support system.
 
2. 100% CPU usage when using Chrome

This is one of those issues where the logs would be handy.  However, this could be related to a Deny setting or the scripting programs you mention in Item 5.  When we're dealing with an Unknown program we've only ever seen once (like one you wrote yourself), it's definitely going to be treated with a greater degree of suspicion than a Known-Good program that we have whitelisted.  If that program is trying to interfere with Chrome, it's very likely to be sandboxed and run in a protected space for examination before it's allowed to actually run.  One way of going about dealing with a situation like this would be to see if we can whitelist your program, but that determination needs to be made by our threat researchers via a support ticket, which I would recommend in this case.
 
3. Num-Lock is Forced Off
 
Was num-lock off when you installed?  As a rule, num-lock should be forced into the ON position rather than the OFF position when browsing HTTPS websites.  As an investigational step, could you please ensure that num-lock is in the ON position when you are reinstalling Webroot?  You are probably only experiencing this problem on HTTPS websites, but please correct me if I'm wrong.  I have seen one other report of this issue so far.  It's not entirely clear why this would happen, but we will look into it.  The other person who reported this issue is turning off the Identity Shield in particular for the time being until a resolution is forthcoming.
 
4. Chrome and Firefox Don't Load Sites
 
I think this is going to be related to both Item 2 and Item 5.  In this case, the logs are a necessity.  After you've followed as much of the rest of the troubleshooting as you can, please go ahead and open the support ticket.
 
5. The Scripting Program
 
You should check Identity & Privacy -> View/Edit Protected Applications to see if your program is listed in there.  I'd suggest setting it to Allow if it is listed there.  If it is not listed there, the next thing I would want to do is see the logs please.
 
6. BSOD opening Chrome
 
Review of the crash dump itself is a necessity in this case.  We will need logsI'm looking forward to receiving that support ticket.

 
7. "Smart Training" app on Droid
 
The Webroot Android app does not have the permissions granted to it by the Android OS to be interfering with the Smart Training app in the manner specified.  It also can't interfere with your GPS function.  While it can alert you to apps that can track you, it can't actually take any action on those apps.  However, if this situation is reproducible, I'd like to look into it.  You will need to reset your password first in order to uninstall the Webroot app.  Once the app is uninstalled, see if Smart Training works properly for a few days.  It's important to rule out intermittent GPS connectivity issues as best we can, and that will require a reasonable sample time period.  Then reinstall Webroot and see if the issue shows up again.  If so, I can follow up with information on obtaining logs from the Android if necessary.
 
One final thing I'd like to mention is that it helps fellow forum members to be able to search for topics by the topic name in order to see if other people are running into the same problems they are.  When we get a big thread like this with a lot going on, it's harder for other forum members to parse through.  So it's helpful to split up multiple issues into smaller topics when you can.  We can usually help you quicker that way too.  This is probably something we should add to The Community Guidelines, so I'll do that shortly.
 
I'm looking forward to your reply and your support ticket.  🙂
Jim - 
 
Thanks for the quick response. I wasn't sure if I should break these up or not. When I started, I didn't know it would be as long as it ended up being.
 
I'll open a ticket. To be honest,  Ihaven't had the time to go in and tweak permissions / allows and things like that. I installed it that was pretty much it.
 
The scans ran completely on all of installs. I did them remotely, well 3 of them.
 
I probably need to look at the settings and see of I can make some of these go away and then open tickets on what is left. I'm an IT Manager and programmer, networking guy and all that. Not sure I will have much time this afternoon, I am heading out to fix a down VPN circuit.
 
I'll get back on this when I can. The copy and paste is probably the highest priority and the place it is most impacting is with the Agency Management System we use in my Insurance Agency. I'll check the settings and see if I can tweak that.
How do I access the log files? I have found the scan log file, but I would like to look at the others. What is the directory of the logs on XP and Windows 7? What I am seeing is that with the software enabled I am getting a lot of "website not found" type errors. If I disable Webroot, I don't get them. I have gone throught every setting I can find and set every program to "Allow" and none are set to "Protect" or "Block". I'm not sure doing that is a good idea, because I want protection. But until I can see what is going on, it seems the thing to do. Before I open a ticket, I would like to lok at the logs.
Userlevel 7
It sounds like you are business customer, so I'm going to move this over to the Business forum for now.  If I am mistaken in this assumption, please let me know, and I'll move it back.
 
The logs are located in the following locations:
 
Windows 7:
C:ProgramDataWRData
 
XP:
C:Documents & SettingsAll UsersApplication DataWRData
 
When you export a log by going to System Tools -> Reports >Scan Log -> Save as... in the program itself, you are exporting both the most recent scan log, contained in the Res db files, and the contents WRLog.log, which is more of a general program log.
 
The only other items in this directory that are openable via a text editor are SystemCleaner.log and any Ace db files (if you have any).  The SystemCleaner log would probably not be useful to you in this case however, and the Ace files are logs of infection removals, so you might not even have any, based on the reported issue, and they would not be of much use for the most recently reported issue in any case.
 
It's important to note that when support requests logs, there are two different things we could be talking about.  There are these basic logs that exist in this directory.  There is also a separate log-gathering tool that picks up things like Windows System Event logs, Windows Application logs, crash dumps, etc.  In your case, we would be asking for this more robust set once there is a case in the ticket system.
 
You are correct that as a rule, you probably don't want to set your browsers to Allow.  The troubleshooting you're doing yourself makes sense for now though.  Just remember to change them back to Protect when you're done if you want to take advantage of the Identity Shield features.  🙂

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