Firewall in Vista x64 keeps closing by itself

[ZoSo]

Every time I go to open the Windows Firewall, it'll open for about 2 to 3 seconds then it closes by itself. It's a real pain when your trying to block/unblock a program. Same thing when I open Windows Defender too.
Whether I open them from the Control Panel or Security Center.

Anyone else experience this?
or
Know of a fix for it?

I checked the Event Viewer and there's nothing in there relating to either of them.
I looked on the net and can't seem to find anything about it either, unless I'm overlooking it or something.


TIA

 

[lxskllr]

I've never had that happen. I wonder if it could be a virus. Strange that 2 unrelated security programs have this issue...

 

[ZoSo]

It's a fairly fresh install only 4 days. I did scan for a virus, going to do a Spybot scan now.

 

[QuixoticOne]

Does anything ELSE do that? I've had cases where something stupid like the ESC key gets stuck on a keyboard and things sort of auto respond in weird ways until you figure it out and fix that.

Other than that, if it isn't some freaky problem with your kb / mouse / accessibility settings for the PC, I'd suspect some malware is fighting with those programs.

 

[ZoSo]

Spybot came up clean, HiJack This isn't showing anything I don't know about. This is really stumping me.

OK here's something that makes it more strange, if I open Task Manager, and then open either one, they stay open, but soon as I close Task Manager they close.

 

[lxskllr]

Does any other program do that? How about explorer windows?

 

[ZoSo]

Nothing else does it out of what I have used so far.
The only thing open is Control Panel and I'll open it either through Security Center or the individual icons.

OH yeah, when I do have task manager running and open one of them, they function normally.

 

[QuixoticOne]

try creating a new administrator level user on the machine and login to that user account and see if it happens there also.. if it does also happen in the brand new user account something is very very wrong with your system or whatever. If it does not happen there you have some weird program loaded in the other user's start-up or weird profile setting conflicting with the system in kind of a bad way.

Malware is still a question. "Malware bytes anti malware" and "Super AntiSpyware" might be two more to try.

 

[ZoSo]

Created a new user and everything works fine. Ran a couple more scans for malware and the system is clean. Nothing is starting up that I don't know about either.
The firewall notice does come up if somethnig is trying to access it.
I haven't changed anything since I installed Vista.
I've only installed 2 games and VMWare, I haven't done much with this system, yet.
Until I find a fix, for now I'll just open Task Manager if I need to change anything in the firewall settings. I really want to avoid doing a re-install as much as possible, because everything else is running fine.