UPDATE:
Comodo tried updating itself during a windows update
which failed halfway through, and caused an infinite loading situation at the Win 7 Welcome screen which took forever to correct as it
wouldn't allow itself to be repaired, and it's comparable to a worm in the fact it leaves traces of itself EVERYWHERE after "uninstalling", which
blocks a fresh reinstall despite removing all registry and file locations (that I could find with autoruns and cccleaner after uninstalling via control panel). Even more annoying is it left drivers in place, which blocked windows built-in firewall from interacting with the modem despite the fact everything was removed. And even offline (plug pulled) it wouldn't allow earlier versions (that worked before) to be installed as it still managed to detect the failed update as being successfully "running and installed" thus unable to modify. They lost a customer after nearly 10 years for that garbage.
Anyhow, I gave up on Comodo and tried TinyWall instead. After about a 10 minute whitewash session of adding
everything avast including the
openvpn.exe and saving, Secureline connected right away and thus far seems to be holding a connection.
During the numerous failed reinstall attempts of Comodo, the installer has the option to switch to "secure comodo DNS settings", which I didn't remember from 2 years ago, which was the last fresh win7 install I've done. My guess at this point is THAT choice might have been impeding Secureline from being reliable with comodo, though it's only a guess.
My humble advice is drop comodo if you have it. If you uninstall it and get a hung "Welcome" screen all of a sudden, go into safe mode: run box ->msconfig, prevent comodo remnants from starting at start up, reboot; remove any Comodo drivers still attached and re-enable windows firewall and reboot. Don't make the mistake I did where I started investigating the DHCP Client (yellow triangle for tray icon appeared after already having internet the night before) in Services and accidentally made matters worse by unticking the "This Account" password I'd never seen before, preventing the thing from restarting (sighs) all because some left over driver didn't get removed!! For the record, if you did that and somehow find this, select DHCP in services from task manager, then select "Services" button in lower right; right-click DHCP Client in new window, select properties, Log On; if "This account" was changed to "Local System account"
by accident, it won't allow the DHCP to be restarted, and the password part threw me as I'd never entered one before. Typing "Local Service" (might need to browse and verify the Local Service) then use your win7 log on password and confirming it, then applying should hopefully correct that and allow it to be restarted.
