Child Item

Site Totals

61368 Questions Answered 267 Categories

Verizon internet acess blocked by Verizon Internet Security Suite

I lost the ability, on my laptop, to achieve either wireless or LAN internet connectivity. After several hours of trying every tech tweak I could think of, I got Verizon online tech support to spend an hour or so with me. They couldn't solve the problem, either, and said that the issue was with the computer. (If anybody from Verizon wants to trace that tech support call, it's Ticket number:{edited for privacy})

Convinced that they were correct I kept trying to discover if the problem was hardware based (weird, because I was able to connect to my Homegroup, just not get internet, while other computers using the same router had no issue) or software based. Early on I had shut down the firewall in the Verizon Internet Security Suite, and had always had the Windows firewall "off." i was ready to order replacement hardware for my laptop, when I checked the Windows firewall one more time. It reported that the VISS firewall was blocking access to public sites. I went back to the VISS and it still showed the firewall as "off." The only way to check this was to uninstall VISS. When I did that, the internet connection was restored immediately.

There are two problems here: the first is a glitch in the VISS that would allow something like this to happen. The second is that Verizon tech support didn't take a single look at the VISS - their own product! After several hours of my time spent on this, I'll be using another Anti-Virus program, probably a free one.

Comments

Anthony_VZ

Sorry to hear about the problems you were having with the software. Sounds like a glitch had kept it on when it was set to off. Reinstalling the program will put it on fresh and likely fix your problem.

hzmt22193

Same here. I had a error from the viss all this week about the update loader not working. Today after rebooting, I could no longer connect to the internet. I tried everything and finally called Verizon. Once I told them what happened, they knew that the problem was the viss. Uninstall the viss. reboot. If you now have internet reinstall the viss. They said that the bug has been fixed.

swp3

This problem occurred for me on Tuesday August 21st. I called verizon and was informed to uninstall the VISS and reinstall it.

Well, even after uninstalling VISS my internet connection has not come back. I spent 1 and 1/2 hours with a tech support person and we flushed everything and restarted everything probably 3 times. She took control and did some more checking and decided it was my computer. My wireless connection works, I am using my husbands laptop to send this. I just want to know if there is any recourse I can take since it was McAfee's product and Verizon that caused my problem?? Is there anything else I can try?

I have used Verizon for 9 years here am about ready to bail. BTW I have Windows XP.

brauh01

Similar issues here. All hardware is Dell, all running Windows XP Service Pack 3. Had to uninstall VISS and re-install on all 3 as all 3 were blocked. Re-installation process was easy for 1, but extremely long for the other 2, with no obvious reason why. One required deleting Verizon Download Manager 3 times before I could get to a point where the download did not hang. As I write this, I am waiting for the 2 remaining machines to complete virus scan and re-installation. On the whole, a multi-hour process which I wish I do not have to do. I suspect there is more to this than "just a glitch", but I doubt we'll ever know.

Hubrisnxs

I was told that if you can get online, then you can get the mcafee virtual tech to fix the issue

https://mvt.mcafee.com/mvt/en-us/default.html?en-us

If you can't get online, boot into safemode with networking, and then get online and then do the virtual tech.

Safemode Boot Options

Windows XP users
Windows Vista users
Windows 7 users
Windows 98 and ME users
Windows 95 users
Windows 2000 users

Usually, all you do is start your PC and as the computer is booting press and hold your "F8 Key" which should bring up the "Windows Advanced Options Menu" as shown below. Use your arrow keys to move to "Safe Mode w/networking" and press your Enter key.

brauh01

When i tried that earlier today, the McAfee site didn't recognize Verizon's product (VISS).

Bill

Hubrisnxs

McAfee Fixes Buggy Antivirus Update, Resolves Errors

McAfee has fixed the buggy update that disabled the security software for many home and enterprise users over the weekend.
Users who received the latest updates for McAfee's consumer and enterprise versions of its antivirus software last Friday found themselves unable to access the Internet or encountering errors within the application, according to messages posted on McAfee's community forums. Many home users were unable to access the McAfee Security Center console, preventing from running anything within the software program. Enterprise users encountered errors with the On-Access Scanner.
Enterprise users had to wait till Monday for VSE 8.8 Hotfix 793640, which contained the full DAT 6809 update, according to a McAfee knowledge base article. However, the hotfix was 100 MB in size, making deployment a challenge for administrators overseeing a large number of affected machines.
"Deployment can cause high bandwidth usage in large environments," McAfee recommended. The support document also suggested deploying the hotfix in stages rather than to all systems at once.
McAfee released a smaller version of the hotfix, VSE 8.9 Hotfix 793781, late Tuesday evening. While the smaller hotfix has a smaller initial footprint and addresses most of the issues, "remediated systems will require a full DAT update as soon as possible," according to the advisory.
Unprotected Systems
Some administrators were concerned that users could get infected while OAS was disabled and spread throughout the network. "The issue is well over 24 hours old now, and it's been 'officially' confirmed for nearly 24. That's a very long time to have AV [antivirus] in a faulty state," a user named mjmurra wrote on the forum boards.
The hotfix does not force a reboot, but the company recommended all systems be restarted after installing the fixes in order to validate the latest update. "This has predominantly affected our servers and rebooting them isn't an option," harris_s posted on the forums.
Buggy Updates Are a Trend
This isn't the first time a security vendor had a faulty update. McAfee alone has had three bad DAT updates in recent years, including the April update for its email gateway security products that caused the systems to crash and display message scan failures. McAfee is not alone, as a problem update was behind the Microsoft's Security Essentials scanner attempt to flag google.com as malware. Just last month, Symantec released an update for its Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1 that caused many users running Windows XP to see the blue screen of death. Symantec rolled back the signatures a few days later.
"Since these events are becoming a worrying trend, should we implement test procedures inside our organizations as we do with other updates like the ones deployed by Microsoft with Windows Update?" wrote Manuel Humberto Santander Pelaez, of the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center.
Many enterprises have the IT administrator test out all the patches, such as the ones released by Microsoft for Patch Tuesday, Oracle's Critical Patch Updates, and Adobe's security updates, to ensure there are no conflicts. After thorough testing, the IT department deploys the fixes to the rest of the organization.
"Implementing a faulty update has a high risk to the organization and its solution consumes considerable time and substantial resources," Pelaez wrote.
Commenters on the Internet Storm Center blog told Pelaez that testing antivirus updates would significantly expand the time period users are not being protected from the latest threats. "I don't know about other organizations, but we barely even have the time and resources for testing tons of OS and application patches before rolling them out. Who'd have time to do this for every rollout of a new DAT file?" a commenter named Brent wrote.
Considering that antivirus tools are already reactive, delaying the updates even further "would make antivirus tools even less effective than they currently are," Brent wrote.
Home Users
The fix for home users was available on Sunday. The latest DAT 6809fixed the issues introduced with the faulty updates DAT 6807 and 6808. McAfee confirmed the issues on Sunday and posted suggested mitigations while downloading the lateset DAT 6809 update.
Users who lost Internet connectivity were encouraged to uninstall McAfee, reboot the computer, and download the latest version from the Website and installing it. This is a big concern, as it leaves users unprotected the entire time while they are trying to fix the problem.
Users encountering errors within the application were encouraged to update to DAT 6809. If the errors continued, users should uninstall the program with McAfee Consumer Product Removal tool and then re-install the latest version, according to the technical document posted Sunday.

brauh

Thanks for this. When I run the McAfee Assistant, I get a message saying that no McAfee products are found. When I select continue, there seems to be some scripts to purge the system of DNS cache and Temp Files. Previously, I did not select the "continue" option. We'll see how it goes from here, but there are some places McAfee installation appears to hang such as Site Adviser. Since there aren't more comments here, I must be lucky in having one of the configurations that does not work well. With that said, for those with probs, you really need some idea of how to work around the issues to even get to this Forum.

Thanks again for your help.

Best regards.

Hubrisnxs

np, hope this helps, if you don't have verizon's brand of mcafee, then you can try this.

goto http://www.mcafee.com/us/

for home, drop down to support

go to technical support

PC & MAC security, start

Phone Tech support, start

country, US, next

free telephone support, next

fill out form,

then you get a service number to call

866-622-3911 and you get a service request number unique to

you, as well as a confirmation email with same info.

then mcafee can help you from there, if you are still having trouble.

brauh01

At long last, all 3 machines are now up to date. The hardest one to solve was one in which the VISS download became corrupted. Had to go to the McAfee site and hunt for a consumer version software removal tool, as VISS was not showing up in the Control Panel's Add/Remove software. With the corrupted install, all attempts at re-installing were hanging, because the Download Manager was indicating VISS was already running.

I also was not aware that IHA could be used for installation. I was d/ling from the verizon.net site.

Hope this helps someone else.

Bill

Child Item