Problem launching GnuCash with firewall enabled

Geert Janssens janssens-geert at telenet.be
Tue Feb 9 06:28:56 EST 2010


On Tuesday 9 February 2010, macaronic wrote:
> This may help other who encounter the same problem.  I didn't find anything
> in the forum that addressed this.
> 
> I am running a fully patched Windows XP SP3 on a 1.66 GHz/1GB/160GB laptop.
> I installed GnuCash 2.2.9 on my system.  When I run the software (both from
> the shortcut as well as the executable file in the installation directory)
> an instance of GnuCash flashes momentarily on the task bar and then
> disappears.  No windows appear and there is no error message.
> 
> 1. I relaunched GnuCash and was alerted that another instance of the
>  program is already running.
> 2. I rebooted.  Same problem.  I waiting a long time in case it was taking
> it's time loading.
> 3. I rebooted.  Reinstalled.  Same problem.
> 4. I rebooted.  Uninstalled.  Installed 2.2.0 (an older working version).
> Same problem.
> 5. I rebooted.  Uninstalled.  Installed GnuCash Portable 2.2.9.  Same
> problem.  Launching it again alerted me that the launcher was already
> running and indeed gnucash-bin.exe is listed in process list.
> 6. I repeated this last step on a USB drive.  Same problem.
> 7. I disabled a slew of processes and found that GnuCash will only run when
> ZoneAlarm Personal Firewall is shutdown.
> 8. When Zone Alarm is running and exceptions are made for gnucash-bin.exe
> and gconfd-2.exe, GnuCash will launch.
> 9. When I repeat these steps with my wireless adapter disabled, I get the
> same result.  GnuCash will still launch without Internet access but it
> doesn't like being denied the possibility of accessing it.
> 
> GnuCash was never so tenacious about Internet access in the past.  I've
> never used any of it's online features.  I wonder why it needs this
> reassurance.
> 
Unfortunately this is a known problem with GConf on Windows. GConf is the 
Gnome preference database, which is used amongst others by GnuCash. This 
problem not only affects GnuCash but all other Gnome applications you would 
like to install on Windows as well (like Gimp for example).

This is being discussed in bugzilla in two bugs:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=510720
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=363648

The second one was marked resolved, but obviously this is still not the case.

> P.S. This is my first forum post.  I didn't notice any stickies, FAQs, or
> "Read this first".  Please kindly point me in the right direction if this
> forum has any particular conventions
> 
Just for your information, there is not really a forum for GnuCash. Instead 
this is a mailing list, and nabble does some fancy stuff with it to make it 
look as a forum. This explains the lack of stickies, FAQs and other forum 
goodies.

There are no particular conventions to follow, good netiquette helps of 
course. There is a GnuCash FAQ in the wiki that may be a good starting point 
in case you encounter errors. You can find it here:
http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ

Geert


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