Updates Blocked by Firewall

[jhaber31]

I've long had problems with completing Spybot updates. The command doesn't hang. Rather, it runs quite quickly, but the vertical bar turns red, one or two of the lines flying by reports an error, and at the end it says it failed. I've found that rebooting and then turning off (temporarily) the McAfee Antivirus firewall does the trick, and things go fine.

Is there a way to avoid that step? I went into the firewall's settings for "internet connections for programs." It already listed Scanner Service (sdfssvc) and Tray Access (sdtray). I added Background Update Service (sdupdsvc) and Update (sdupdate). That didn't require typing anything. Rather, it just asked me to browse, locate the exe and click. Easy. But so far, that doesn't seem to do the job. I realize this is not a major inconvenience! Thanks.

[niall2]

Hi jhaber31,

Have you tried the steps listed here for users who are experiencing issues downloading updates:
https://www.safer-networking.org/faq...update-failed/

[jhaber31]

Thanks, but I had tried that, and it didn't help. I'm coming around to thinking that reboot, then disable firewall is not too onerous.

BTW, I asked elsewhere about the program added to Windows start-up programs (through the registry's software/windows/current version/ run), something about tray access. It doesn't appear to add a tray icon, so what does it actually do, and may I delete it without getting in the way of running Spybot? About once a week I run update, immunize, and scan.