Richard Webb writes...

FYI, I find that when I have the firewall active on my laptop, GS attempts to load, Norton asks permission to let GS access the web and when permission is given, GS does not appear. It turns out that GS is running but not visible. I have to restart the computer to unload GS. If the firewall is off before starting GS, everything runs OK.

Although I can run without the firewall, I would be more comfortable with it.

Thanks,

Dick

On 2005-12-07 3:57pm GenSmarts replied...

It's most likely a bug in the firewall or perhaps windows... Windows simply isn't giving control back to GenSmarts after having been interrupted by Norton.

I suspect if you change your firewall settings so it allows GenSmarts.exe and GSEngine.exe to access the internet, you'll be

fine.

On 2005-12-07 3:58pm GenSmarts replied...

This was posted in our forum in mid-July and was one of the posts we recently lost during some maintenance...

Two reports today from two different users who were having trouble installing on brand new machines... both came with XP Windows Media Center as the operating system and had Norton Internet Security (NIS) installed/enabled. GenSmarts either appeared to do nothing when they started it, or produced a message saying they already had a copy running. Rebooting ran into difficulty because Windows has difficulty shutting down GenSmarts, which it thinks is still running (though as a user you can't see it).

Disabling Norton Internet Security (after turning the PC on and off) seems to resolve the problem.... GenSmarts works as you would expect thereafter. There may be a way to tell Norton Internet Security that GenSmarts.exe GSEngine.exe are trusted processes - try that if you want to leave Norton Internet Security enabled.

Looks to me like a bug in NIS, though I suppose it could be a bug in XP's Media Center Edition itself. What I think is happening is that NIS or XP is hanging the thread GenSmarts is using for a certain type of internet access (not via your browser, but a direct access) and that's the root of these problems.

I know we've got users with other versions of XP that use NIS and don't have these issues, though NIS definitly will block the upgrade check/process that GenSmarts uses. So I think the issue is likely unique to the Media Center Edition, or perhaps some new release of NIS.

Aaron

GenSmarts Support

On 2005-12-13 4:50pm GenSmarts replied...

Dick,

Can you post what version of Norton you have, as well as your Windows version? I'd like to see if it's a specific combination of Norton or Windows that seems to have this issue.

You'll find the Windows version if you right click on My Computer (the real thing, not a shortcut) and select Properties... it's on the general tab. For example, the machine I'm on says:

XP Pro, Version 2002, Service Pack 2

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