Does anyone thinks this version sucks...?

Let me explain: it started happening to me when I updated to the latest version, that after being online for a while the firewall crashes and gives this message: "cannot connect to service", and all connectivity is lost.

But not only that, it happens sometimes that, even when the firewall is running, I cannot access internet, why?? THERE ARE NO CONNECTIONS ALIVE!!!

The firewall seems to lose track of my connection, (including the network adapter and IP adress/submask) even while it is displayed in the network connections tab.And theres is no way around the problem, except of course rebooting the machine.

Can anyone tell me why tis happens?
(and yes, I tried a clean install of the new version...)

ok, don`t you all rush to answer.........

I've been using it on a XP Home SP2 machine with DSL since the latest version was released. No problems at all.

I've been getting the "cannot connect to service" alert from SKPF 4 pop up now and again also.

It just happened a few minutes ago not long after i started off i torrent. I don't reboot my machine though i just disable the internet connection and then manually restart the sunbelt firewall from the program list.

It's a pain though and i've had no issues with other firewalls i've tried on one month trials lately. But i like SKPF and my paid subscription doesn't run out until noveber and i want to stick with it.
Although it seems worse on leak tests and kill tests compared to zone alarm and comodo... and look 'n' stop!.

Any updated versions in the pipeline?

Well that's what I'm talking about pjdaman. I don't wnat to change the firewall either. I've been using Kerio for ever and I really feel good about it.

I also contacted Sunbelt Support (they have been great about response) but they don't know what could be causing the problem.

Right now, by advice of Philip from Sunbelt I went back to version 4.3.268.

That's all I can say because I have not found a solution yet.

Just adding to this, i contacted support and was given the link to download the latest version [4.5.916] and all seems nice and stable so far )

Upgrading from the check for updates wasn't working, so i was running 4.3.7.44 still [i think]. Anyway, no random "cannot connect to service" errors and other such things now. Hope it lasts !!.

Yeah, we do too, pjdaman. Really have to hate problems that have no logical cause/solution.

_________________
MS MVP Security 2006-2008

FWIW - I've ben suffering from the "cannot connect to service" prob as well (4.5.916) - restarting the prog seems to cure it. Don't have a Scooby what's causing it - other than I'm using wireless USB which Kerio has known probs with but AFAIK this isn't one of them. There's always the possibility it could be I guess.
There's something strange about the latest version - Kerio doesn't seem to be letting go of Application hooks properly. Kerio keeps popping up dialogs stating App "blah..blah.." is attempting Internet access - /outgoing even when the App is closed down - it's actually displatying dialogs for the wrong Apps. Very weird and a real shame as Kerio seems to have the potential to be the best 3rd party two-way firewall for XP/Vista.
Oh well - guess that lies in the domain of the SPF4 Devs.

To shine a light, the problem with the cannot connect to service and the loss of connections or devices is triggered by a problem in the driver when handling multiple TCP/UDP connections (generaly caused by P2P programs -eMule in my case), at least that is what I got from Sunbelt support, of course they are working on a fix for the next release.
I coult tell the difference because my machine at work is still running ver. 4.5.916 and I never had the problem, not like my machine at home which is actualy running on ver 4.3.268.

They also know about the hooks problem, which is also one of the major problems of kerio wich implements a lot of usermode hooks, that are so fierly critcized by Matousec, and again they are woriking on that.

I would like to thank the posters in this thread. This issue:

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Sunbelt Personal Firewall 4 - GUI
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Cannot connect to service.
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OK
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Has been a plague for years throughout many versions for me. Randomly popping up about once an hcademic term, from then on it wouldn't let go - i.e. rather than the randomness that a previous poster has alluded to, once it randomly occurs it then regularly reccurs. Internet connectivity has been critical to my existence for some time now, and usually once that evil recurring Critical error dialog appears its the death knell for that Windows install. The issue didn't go away (stop recurring) after restarting the firewall, reinstalling it, uninstalling, cleaning up any files, reinstalling it, and then finally all that plus not using the configuration that I had built up over time. Fresh installing of Windows appeared to get rid of it, but I always expect it to randomly start again some time in the future. Such a bane, I consider its GUI to be fantastic and head over shoulders better than anything else I have used/seen.

It really caught me off-guard when this issue suddenly appeared on a secondary machine of mine, yesterday. It has NEVER spread beyond my main machine for all the years that I have been using Sunbelt Kerio Personal FW, so I had assumed that it was a special issue with my main machine. After restarting the driver and then the firewall itself, I left it fully expecting for it to recurr in the near future, and it did today. So I started looking into it again, and found this thread after a number of googles. SBPFW also sometimes gains an issue where it starts up during system startup but never manages to launch a GUI process, and then seperately I have noticed complete failures to launch at system startup even though it is an automatic Service.

I had begun to look over the debug and error logs in the hopes of solving the general connection issue, but saying that, this didn't tell me that the driver itself has issues with TCP/UDP connections in general; rather some kind of database issue was preventing communication: 'tinydb_send_query: system error'.

I eagerly await a time when I can operate without fear of a catastrophic firewall failure, so the news that this is a real issue and is being worked on is music to my ears.