I noticed in Security History Firewall Activities and also Firewall Network and Connections that the last dates any history was posted was:
Firewall Activities: July 29
Firewall Network and Connections: August 3
There is no history information beyond these dates.
Is this normal? Shouldn't info be posted everyday in these? These dates are a long time ago.
Also, when clicking into Firewall Network and Connections , the top one listed (August 3) says, "The Windows Firewall has been enabled." If I put my mouse on it and click, the Administrator Account Control dialogue box comes up asking for my Administrator Password to open the Windows Firewall. (I always work in the Standard Account.)
Does anyone know what's causing this odd behavior?
If you always work in the Standard Account, then you might want to make sure that you set the options so that you can see all of the Settings from your Standard Account. To do this, log in as Administrator, then access the Settings link for your product, and go to Miscellaneous Settings. The setting that will allow you to manage your settings from the Standard Account is called "Non-Admins Access to Settings". If you set this to "On" then you will be able to have Administrator access to your Norton settings even though you are logged in only on the Standard Account.
I'm not sure there should be events every day, but it does seem a bit odd that it would have been that long ago since the last events in those categories. Do you see recent events in the other History categories? There had been problems a while back where under some conditions new events may not get added but I have not seen this reported for quite some time.
You can if you choose, clear your NIS history and see if these events start logging normally. Select Full History from the drop down list then click Clear History and answer Yes to the confirmation prompt. This will clear all history events and if there is a problem with logging this should resolve it.
Finally, I am wondering about the event you mentioned talking about the "Windows firewall has been enabled". This one sounds a bit odd. The Windows firewall should of course never be on since you have NIS.
I have seen a couple of occasions though where the Windows firewall was left on during installation though I have never seen reports of it just suddenly coming on out of the blue. To be sure you should check to ensure that the Windows Firewall is OFF in call categories.
Please see the following post for how to check this.
The really odd thing here is that it looks like there were no firewall log entries after the one saying that the Windows Firewall had been enabled. With Norton on board, the Norton FIrewall would always be the default firewall, whether it was enabled or not. So this entry is very strange. I think this may all be part of the same issue. Are there any other indications that the Norton Firewall might have been turned off during this time? Or that both firewalls were on simultaneously?
The really odd thing here is that it looks like there were no firewall log entries after the one saying that the Windows Firewall had been enabled. With Norton on board, the Norton FIrewall would always be the default firewall, whether it was enabled or not. So this entry is very strange. I think this may all be part of the same issue. Are there any other indications that the Norton Firewall might have been turned off during this time? Or that both firewalls were on simultaneously?
There is only one way to find out. I have seen a few occasions where the Windows firewall AND NIS firewall were both ON. This happened on my test laptop and it caused problems with being able to connect between my Ghost installs between the laptop and the desktop.
And before you ask NO this was not because of BETA software being on my test laptop. The time I saw this was after a fresh restoral to factory condition and a fresh installation of NIS 2011.
Since that time I've learned not to be too careful and to not assume the Windows firewall is OFF.
I am pretty sure that when I saw this on my laptop, I was still getting NIS firewall events but it has been a while so I could be remembering wrong. But yeah I noticed that eerie coincidence too.
The OP should be able shed some light on that soon hopefully.
The information was showing the same today as in my first post. In the Admin User Account, I did the following:
Checked the Windows Firewall: It is off.
Checked the Security Center: NIS 2011 is the only firewall that is on.
Clicked into NIS Security History and cleared everything out.
Both the Firewall Activities and Firewall Network and Connections are recording properly now.
Could all of this had something to do with my router? I don't use my laptop that much, but I sometimes connect my laptop to the router on the desktop computer, as I work from another area in the house. Noticed today that the laptop's Network and Sharing Center shows a "Public" network and (uh-oh) the desktop's Network and Sharing Center shows a "Private" network....
I can't see this having anything to do with the router. It sounds like a case where NIS simply stopped logging firewall related events. It has been a long time since I've seen that reported but I do recall quite a ways in the past this did happen on occasion.
Did you happen to check if events in other categories were recording normally during this time before you cleared the History?
If this does happen again I would suggest that you hold off in doing anything to clear it and report back here with a new thread (assuming this one is closed by then) so that we can ask Symantec what information they want collected before we clear the history logs again. In either case if this does happen again and you start a new thread, please post a link back to this thread for reference.
And if you could be so kind to send me a PM if this does happen again. I monitor the forums a lot but it is possible that I could miss your post and I'd really like to be involved if this comes up again.
It is really odd that this problem coincided with an event that seemed to indicate that the Windows firewall was ON and YET the firewall actually was NOT on when you checked. Not sure what to make of that.
Thanks for coming back to let us know what happened.
Cody, Allen has provided some valuable comments. Let me further add/ask, if you go to your Norton product's Security History and "Show" the "Norton Error Reporting" section, are there any entries there? If so, please right-click on one and then choose Copy and lastly paste the information back in a response to this message.
