Sarah Dean's Norton Firewall Update Ruleset Fixer

By Sarah Dean
Last updated: 28th January 2001

Contents

Description

When Symantec introduced their v2.55 upgrade to Norton Firewall, they did it in such a manner as to force the user to recreate any firewall rules they had.

Ugly, but that's what Symantec did.

This program, if the instructions are followed before the update is applied, will allow you to migrate your firewall rules over in order to allow them to be used with this upgrade, rather than being forced to start from scratch.

Full source code is included

Please email any bug reports, feature requests, comments, etc to me at sdean12@sdean12.org

The latest version is always available at: http://www.SDean12.org/

How this program works

In a nutshell, it looks at your
\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Symantec\IAM\FirewallObjects\Applications
registry keys, and an additional registry key containing the SHA-1 hash for each application found.

Download

Download latest NortonFWFixer (v1.0.0) executables and source code (about 200K) (If you wish to build your own copy from the source, see also Delphi Components  to download components required to compile this software)

Instructions

THIS FIX WILL ONLY WORK IF YOU TAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR FIREWALL RULES *PRIOR* TO APPLYING THE NORTON UPDATE TO v2.55

WARNING: THIS SOFTWARE HAS BEEN MINIMALLY TESTED UNDER WINDOWS Me, AND NO GUARANTEES ARE GIVEN

Having said that, due to the way in this this program operates, as long as you follow the instructions, no harm should come to either your computer, or your installation of Norton Firewall.

The fix this program applies only needs to be done once. Doing it more than once is harmless, but quite pointless.

Basic instructions:
 

  1. Make a backup copy of your Norton Firewall rules.
      2. To do this, simply run "regedit", and go to:
        \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Symantec\IAM
      Click "Registry|Export Registry File", to save your current ruleset to a "before_update.reg" file.
  2. Install the firewall update as any other update (e.g. via LiveUpdate)
  3. Reboot when prompted
  4. Close all running applications
  5. Make a backup copy of your Norton Firewall rules.
      6. To do this, simply run "regedit", and go to:
        \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Symantec\IAM
      Click "Registry|Export Registry File", to save your current ruleset to a "after_update.reg" file.
      This step is purely for backup purposes, and may be skipped if you wish.
  6. Disable Norton Firewall
  7. Run regedit, and delete the registry key backed up in step 1.
      8. Do this by running regedit, navigating to the "IAM" key, and pressing delete.
  8. Restore your backed up firewall rules
      9. i.e. doubleclick on the ".reg" file you created in step 1
  9. Run this program, and click the "Apply fix" button.
  10. Review the "Status" panel below, and check for any error messages.
If all has gone well, you should now be able to reenable Norton Firewall, and continue as normal.
 

Known Bugs

Bugs with v1.0.0:

Appendix A: Version History

Appendix B: PGP Public Key

To send PGP encrypted email to me, please feel free to use the following PGP public key block: 
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Email me at: sdean12@sdean12.org

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