Agent won't open after Restart, Part 2, probably applies to V,7,8, and 10.

Micky

2015-11-20 19:48:50 UTC

Forte Agent 1.93 won't open after Restart, Part 2

The short answer is that the problem was Data Execution Prevention
(DEP).

Even though Agent19.exe was in the agent19 directory, which is in the
Programs directory, and agent6.exe is in the agent6 directory which is
in the Programs directory. And even though it worked fine for 3
weeks.

Despite the fact that the subject line is almost the same, this is not
part of the "Agent won't open after Restart" thread. I plan to go
back later and add the essential info to that thread, but I wanted
everyone to see this.

To review, I had been forced to migrate from XP to Vista, and Agent
1.93 worked fine for 3 weeks.

I don't see how this could be relevant but I had just copied from a
backup harddrive 2 or 3 gigs of files I had downloaded when I was
using XP. Doing so made AVG alert about 3 times: One of those was a
flight-simulator program that I've not used yet but which always
causes an AVG alert, another file I allowed XP to quarantine, an iirc
another file that got deleted from the source!! somehow. But after I
restarted Windows, none of these files were in RAM.

Then I Shut Down Vista, and when I restarted it, until just now, Agent
1.93 would not run correctly. It would start, use about 50% of the CPU
but never display a screen. I had to use Task Manager to stop the
process.

I was looking for info about something unrelated, stunnel.exe, and one
of the forte-agent threads that mentioned it was this one:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent/stunnel/alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent/ZJ4qwtK1XG4/t9SgF8GKTwkJ

which says in part:

***@gmail.com wrote on 12/22/14 or
On Wednesday, February 16, 2011 5:11:31 PM UTC-8,

I've searched for this, but found no help, just that others are using
1.93 and Win7 with no problems.
I am using a 64 bit Win7, but I'm also using a 64bit XP that Agent works well
from. Done the backward compatibility in Properties, nada.
Any help/clues? Thanks

Be darn, just came across my own post looking for help on stunnel.

One can and I do run 1.93 in Win7, the way I've found to do this is
through DEP.
Goto System Properties (WinKey + Pause/Break) > Performance > settings
(duh) > Data Execution Prevention (DEP).

Select turn on Dep - except those I select - then hit "Add" search for
the location of your Agent.exe....
-- end quote --

==>For Vista this was a little different. First, I've reassigned my
Pause Key to Mute Audio, so I use my Windows Explorer substitute and
right click on the high level item "Computer" and click Properties.

Then under Computer Name, Domain, and Workgroup Settings, I click
Change Settings.
That brings up System Properties (I know there are easier ways to get
here, but I forget them)
The Advanced Tab has a section marked Peformance, and a button there
marked Settings.
Clicking on that brings up Performance Options, and that has a tab
Data Execution Prevention (DEP).
Clicking on the tab I see that DEP is already On for me, though I
never set it, and it has no exceptions.
I add exceptions for two copies of Agent.exe and Agent19.exe (which
are only exceptions for copies in the specified location).

Then I click Apply, and click on the icon for Agent 1.93, and it
starts *immediately*, faster it seems to me than Agent 6 or other
programs have been starting, iirc.

Others posted to say that they had never needed to touch the DEP
setting, to run Agent 1.93 in Win7. My guess is that DEP was never
turned on for them.

Although to be fair, Agent 1.93 worked fine for me in Vista for about
3 weeks, and I still don't know what made it stop!

When I asked about this before, no one thought of DEP, so maybe this
post will help someone in the future.
--