Comodo Firewall 3.0 Screwed up XP

[spacesurfer]

I had installed Comodo Firewall 3.0 on an XP SP2 laptop. Everything went okay. Then, I tried to run Winrar from C:\Apps\Winrar folder. When I ran the app, a dialog from Comodo came up asking me what to do. However, there were several windows open, so this popup went in the background. However, it was half available (meaning that I could see some of the radio buttons, but it wouldn't fully become visible - almost like it was crashing). But I managed to tell it to treat it as a Trusted Application. But then, Winrar wouldn't run. Whenever I double-click on Winrar, windows would say invalid 32-bit application.

I tried several methods but wouldn't work. Then I disable Defense+ from the right-click menu of tray icon (I didn't shutdown Comodo). Winrar ran fine. I enable Defense+ again and winrar wouldn't run. I looked through all the options and even added Winrar as a trusted application but nothing would let me run winrar.

Explorer 7 was already open, and noticed there was a new build so I went online and downloaded a patch upgrade and put it on C:\. I tried to run the patch, and same thing - invalid Win 32 application. I couldn't even move the downloaded patch to another folder.

So, now I'm trying to run any application and all apps from start menu say application not found. Double-clicking on the executables say invalid win 32 application. So, now I'm mad. I shutdown Comodo Firewall by right-click and exit.

Now, it wouldn't even let me restart the computer saying I don't have permission to shut down. So I logged off - it at least let me log off. Then I restarted from the login page and it restarted, but Comodo Firewall remained off. It did not come back on, no tray icon. I couldn't even run it from program files - invalid win 32 app.

I booted from BartPE and wiped out the Comodo folder from program files. Restarted and still no go.

MY SYSTEM IS SCREWED THANKS TO COMODO FIREWALL 3.0! I really trusted the program. I'm not sure what triggered this behaviour.

[Tarun]

What's the exact version of Comodo that you're running?

[spacesurfer]

Tarun,

It was version 3.0.13.268 that I initially installed. And I forgot to mention that after I downloaded the upgrade patch to 3.0.14.276 and couldn't get it to install, I disabled Comodo and installed the patch that way.