Something is stopping a program 'calling home'

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I have a program called ‘CalendarPal’. http://calendarpal.com I’ve used it for years with no problems. 61 hours ago, it stopped updating the weather.
I wrote to the company and they sent me this reply…

“Accuweather is working perfectly and so are its weather feeds. CalendarPal Weather is updating correctly.

There are only two reasons why your weather would not be updating:

1. you’re not connected to the internet
2. because of a security program or firewall you’ve installed, CalendarPal cannot access the Internet.

Since you wrote this email and sent it successfully, it appears you’ve installed (or updated) a security program with a 3rd-party firewall included – or you’ve downloaded and installed a 3rd-party firewall.

If CalendarPal isn’t allowed access to your Internet connection then it cannot access the Accuweather feeds from the Web. Since you don’t need a 3rd-party firewall at all, you’re best bet is to turn it off and use the Windows Firewall – if you don’t want to do this, then you’re going to need to read your firewall’s instructions and figure out how to configure it to allow CalendarPal access to the Internet.

Please note- you may not have installed a “new” firewall, it could be that whatever you’ve installed before has updated to a new version and it is not recognizing CalendarPal. The fact remains something on your computer is blocking CalendarPal and preventing it from accessing the feeds from Accuweather.com. This is not a problem with CalendarPal or with Accuweather.

Keep in mind, Norton, McAfee, ZoneAlarm, CA, TrendMicro, Panda, Vipre and other so-called “security suites” all contain a firewall – and these firewalls, by default, block any program they don’t recognize -regardless if they’re a good program like CalendarPal which needs to access the Internet for valid reasons – or not.

The reason why CalendarPal is not updating is because something on your computer is blocking its Internet access.

Thanks,
TC ”

My security is:
Windows Defender, in which I set the firewall to allow CalendarPal
Avast! version 4.8 home edition http://www.avast.com
SuperAntiSpyware 4.26.1000 http://www.superantispyware.com and
Win Patrol http://www.winpatrol.com

Can anyone see what settings I may be missing? Yes, I do regular updates to all of them, but I surely haven’t changed any settings!

I am using Vista Home Premium 32 bit

Thanks for any help you can give.
Thumperzluv

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My security is:
Windows Defender, in which I set the firewall to allow CalendarPal
Avast! version 4.8 home edition http://www.avast.com
SuperAntiSpyware 4.26.1000 http://www.superantispyware.com and
Win Patrol http://www.winpatrol.com

Can anyone see what settings I may be missing? Yes, I do regular updates to all of them, but I surely haven’t changed any settings!

I am using Vista Home Premium 32 bit

Thanks for any help you can give.
Thumperzluv

You could try disabling each of your security programs in turn (temporarily of course) to see whether you can determine which of them if any is causing the problem. I would have thought it was most likely to be the firewall, so you might start with that.

Ian

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You could try disabling each of your security programs in turn (temporarily of course) to see whether you can determine which of them if any is causing the problem. I would have thought it was most likely to be the firewall, so you might start with that.

Ian

I’ve already done that. I even disabled all of them together, but, same problem.
Thanks for replying though.

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I’ve already done that. I even disabled all of them together, but, same problem.
Thanks for replying though.

Ah, well. At least you have proved that it is not caused by your firewall then, contrary to what the company suggested.

I hope you get it solved.

Ian

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I’ve already done that. I even disabled all of them together, but, same problem.

I know that this one is a pain in the neck to do but have you looked in Event Viewer to see if there’s an entry of any help when the program tries to get out and fails? Perhaps some setting in your equipment or net connection has changed, like a gateway number or something, in which case the suggestion to re-install sounds like a good one.

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I know that this one is a pain in the neck to do but have you looked in Event Viewer to see if there’s an entry of any help when the program tries to get out and fails? Perhaps some setting in your equipment or net connection has changed, like a gateway number or something, in which case the suggestion to re-install sounds like a good one.

I just peeked at Event Viewer, and that is ‘over my head’. I wouldn’t know what to look for, nor where…

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Have you restarted Windows? Tried reinstalling the CalendarPal software?

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Have you restarted Windows? Tried reinstalling the CalendarPal software?

Yes to both.

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I have a program called ‘CalendarPal’. http://calendarpal.com I’ve used it for years with no problems. 61 hours ago, it stopped updating the weather.

Which browser do you use? If IE is in offline mode and you use for example Fx you can still browse the web, but some programs that use IE components to download updates stops working; such as Adobe Reader update, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware update etc.

So if you indeed use another browser, check if IE is in offline mode. But I don’t know how this CalendarPal software works.

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Which browser do you use? If IE is in offline mode and you use for example Fx you can still browse the web, but some programs that use IE components to download updates stops working; such as Adobe Reader update, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware update etc.

So if you indeed use another browser, check if IE is in offline mode. But I don’t know how this CalendarPal software works.

Chrome is my default, but my IE is online mode.

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I have a program called ‘CalendarPal’. http://calendarpal.com I’ve used it for years with no problems. 61 hours ago, it stopped updating the weather.
I wrote to the company and they sent me this reply…

…… Since you don’t need a 3rd-party firewall at all, you’re best bet is to turn it off and use the Windows Firewall – if you don’t want to do this, then you’re going to need to read your firewall’s instructions and figure out how to configure it to allow CalendarPal access to the Internet.

The reason why CalendarPal is not updating is because something on your computer is blocking its Internet access.

Thanks,
TC ”

Thanks for any help you can give.
Thumperzluv

First let me say that the response from the company support team is less than comforting. It is irresponsible of them to tell anyone to turn off a third party firewall and rely on Windows built-in firewall. It boarders on bein useless as it only blocks traffic in one direction and cannot contain trojans and other malware that manage to get on your system. To quote their pharase and paraphrase it, “your best bet would be to uninstall CalanderPal and find a better program to do what it does.” When support from some silly utility tells you to disable any part of your system security to “allow” their program to work properly then it’s time to think about getting rid of their program.

If you can’t find the setting to fix this very minor issue you might try a System Restore back before the program stopped updating and see if that allows you to update your weather. Or you could just look out the window.

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First let me say that the response from the company support team is less than comforting. It is irresponsible of them to tell anyone to turn off a third party firewall and rely on Windows built-in firewall. It boarders on bein useless as it only blocks traffic in one direction and cannot contain trojans and other malware that manage to get on your system. To quote their pharase and paraphrase it, “your best bet would be to uninstall CalanderPal and find a better program to do what it does.” When support from some silly utility tells you to disable any part of your system security to “allow” their program to work properly then it’s time to think about getting rid of their program.

If you can’t find the setting to fix this very minor issue you might try a System Restore back before the program stopped updating and see if that allows you to update your weather. Or you could just look out the window.

After all my head banging it was finally solved. I took out my zip code, entered my sons. It was immediately found and updated! I then re-entered mine and Voila! Stupid glitch! Thanks for your help.

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Glad you got it resolved. Thanks for posting back with your solution.

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