Hi, I have a circa 1996 PC that, naturally I assume, works worse and worse and probably won't last much longer. So it doesn't behave well anyway. But the other night apparently all my firewall settings came undone after I had last been online, and the next time I went to sign onto AOL, I had to manually authorize or deny everything all over again. Had set up rules for that when I first installed this fw months ago, and hadn't had to do that since.

Many of the prompts mentioned AOL specifically but not all of them, some I could never identify. So I said no to all at first, then yes to what it looked like I had to to get online, or to be able to navigate to any websites after that. (Thought it was wrapped up yesterday at least, then just now as I signed on, something unidentifiable was trying to connect or send to "ALL ROUTERS." Pretty sure I never saw that one at all before... And looks like I will continue to get occasional prompts after I get online for now, which had also almost never been happening anymore since I dealt with original rules setup.)

I have the last version of Tiny PFW; AVG free edition; Spybot and Spywareblaster; and Google's pop-up blocker. I can't have a high enough version of AOL on this PC to get any of its new built-in protections. I also tried to do the new virus + spyware scan at Trendmicro and looks like no viruses were found, but as far as anything else, the Summary kept saying it would display but never did -- maybe something about this new beta version isn't fully compatible with Win 95. Don't know of any other online scanners for Win 95 and have no room for any more programs on this PC...

Anyway, does it almost *always* mean something sinister when one's fw settings come undone by themselves? (FYI, my homepage hasn't been reset and I have it locked; I see nothing new or mysterious in the programs list inside Tiny; and there are no new items in startup. I know I can put a password on fw shutdown or changes in the future.) Thanks!

Sounds like corruption. I'd reinstall from scratch.

Oh that would be better, if it can just happen from incidental corruption of the software somehow, rather than due to an intruder/virus. Thanks EC!

It has happened to me before, where ZA PRO lost some settings just after some changes by me, but if someoned "owned" your PC then of course they could do all sorts of havoc.
Be sure to run all AV anti-trojan and aniti malware scans. I'd sugest an online scan at

Housecall:

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Hi! I hadn't made any changes of any kind or downloaded anything before it happened. Hoping it can just be due to the machine being a crappy old beast that for years has crashed often amongst other things and is simply ready to die its natural death any minute.

As far as trendmicro/housecall, as mentioned it doesn't work on my PC. The virus scan does and said nothing found, but the new spyware scan or combined scans they now have available just run and run and never display the summary it keeps promising. And no room/resources to install any more detection or other programs on this frail old thing. I'm not that worried since I intend to pick out a new one very soon... but then I guess I better make very sure about any data I transfer from one to the other, since there will be a lot!

Thanks for stopping back!