Firewall re-prompting and double entries

Yesterday, January’s updates for Windows 10 were installed (KB4483235, KB4480116, KB4480056).

Today, all my apps are re-prompting for network access. If I look at the firewall profile in GlassWire the affected apps have double entries.

I’m running GlassWire Elite 2.1.140

@ittroll

I installed the updates, but I did not see this problem myself and I have not seen it reported by others.

To solve it please do this:

Uninstall GlassWire in add/remove programs.

Go to your “Windows Firewall” control panel and choose “restore defaults”.

Reboot - IMPORTANT

Install GlassWire using our “clean install” and “reset firewall” options.

Thanks, but that would mean I would have to re-enter all my configuration again, including settings beyond the firewall list. That nuclear option doesn’t seem like a good solution.

I went through the app list and manually deleted the duplicates.

It would be useful if the firewall list recorded the date the app last accessed the network. You can then easily delete old apps/entries which haven’t been active for x days.

Yes, I am sorry for the issue.

The reason I suggested this is that somehow during the Windows update I think your Firewall settings with Windows were somehow corrupted, so if something is corrupted I’m not sure what else can be done besides reset it. If it’s corrupted or having an issue then the problem will continue until you do a clean reset.

But saying that, I have never heard of any GlassWire user having this issue after a Windows update so perhaps the problem is related to something else. Here is a link that explains how to backup everything if you want to keep all your current settings, then try some different options to solve the problem.

https://www.glasswire.com/userguide/#Backup_Settings

Thanks for the link. I refer back to that should I continue to have problems. However it looks like it is behaving now.

Looking in the Windows Firewall MMC, I could see two GlassWire entries for each app; the original one and the newly created one. They appeared identical other than the numerical ID used in the name. So for example googleupdate.exe appeared as both {Glasswire.app.in_29} and {Glasswire.app.in_218}.

So am not sure if it was Windows or GlassWire which got very confused.

I will ask our QA to run the update and see if they can notice the issue happen with GlassWire so we can solve it. Thanks for your detailed report, and I apologize for the problem.

So I think the update was a red herring. GlassWire has done it again and no Windows updates have been installed recently. All apps started re-prompting for network access, but this time they were still denied access even when I clicked Allow. In Windows Firewall I could see multiple rule entries for the same app under different Glasswire.app.out_nn entries. The rules showed that the app should be allowed but clearly were not being processed correctly.

I therefore took the nuclear option and did a full reset of my GlassWire installation and Windows Firewall. So I know for sure that I am starting from a completely clean slate. I now have the pleasure of re-allowing/denying all my apps and re-labelling all my network devices. :cry:

I hope that will be a permanent solution and that GlassWire isn’t as fragile as the name implies!

Was there any resolution to this? I am experiencing the same thing on 2 different computers. I have to constantly be reinstalling the product to clear out duplicate rules. No other firewall. No other software. Even a bare bones install and I see the same thing. What was the solution for other users? I do not have time to constantly be resetting up rules. I need to know the product is stable and will not do this. Running 2.2.268.

I also have not had any windows updates installed in the last 2 reboots of the system. Has anyone received further guidance?

@Jr45672

I answered in the other thread and I am now assisting you personally via email.

For anyone else reading, this is not something we see often. If you have this issue please email us with screenshots of the paths of the apps you are seeing duplicated. If the paths are different then it’s expected behavior because technically it’s not the same app.

In this case @Jr45672 has the same paths so we’re trying to figure out why this happened for him so we can help him solve it.

The customer was sent an unreleased beta that solves this issue. If anyone in the future is reading this please be sure you’re using our latest software because this issue will be fixed shortly.

Please note this issue only exists in some unusual situations and it’s not a problem that many GlassWire users experience.

Thanks for your reports so we could find and fix this issue.

I’ve not experienced this issue since I last posted, but it is good to hear that a fix is coming soon.

@ittroll

Did you use multiple drives, or change drives on your PC? It seems to be related to that somehow.

I do have multiple drives. But the O/S and all my apps are on the C: system drive and this was not changed.

When I had this issue it was exactly as described by TheJMan494 in their thread, with multiple rule entries for the same app/path under different Glasswire.app.out_nn entries.

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@Ken_GlassWire I am experiencing this issue again and this time I know the cause!

I updated the firmware on my system drive SSD, after which all apps are re-prompting and duplicate firewall rules are being created. To be clear, the physical drive, logical drive letter, program path and file hash are unchanged. But I guess some underlying drive ID has changed. This makes me think that perhaps the same thing could happen if something like the storage controller driver was updated. I am running v2.2.268.

Here is an example of a duplicate rule:

{GlassWire.in.app_-1379453621.profile_1.mode_2}	GlassWire	All	Yes	Allow	No	c:\program files (x86)\razer\razer services\razer central\razer central.exe
{GlassWire.in.app_1956058586.profile_1.mode_2}	GlassWire	All	Yes	Allow	No	c:\program files (x86)\razer\razer services\razer central\razer central.exe
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@ittroll

We found this bug and our next update should solve it. Thanks for your report!

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Great, glad to hear you have tracked this down. Will the fix also clean up the duplicate rules in the Windows Firewall?

What is the significance of the minus symbol (-) prefix on the number in some of the rules?

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@Ken_GlassWire thanks for this fix:

Fixed an issue that causes all apps to be blocked on the firewall if “ask to connect” is enabled, and if the GlassWire database is moved from one PC to another.

It looks like the upgrade process also cleaned up the duplicate entries. So in the place of my previous example I now just have one entry. :+1:

{GlassWire.in.app_-386469386.profile_1.mode_2}	GlassWire	All	Yes	Allow	No	c:\program files (x86)\razer\razer services\razer central\razer central.exe
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@ittroll

Yes, we spent a quite a lot of time on this. Thanks for your report so we could fix this issue for you.

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