Troubleshooting NetBarrier 2.0: problems and solutions

Problems confirmed Regarding yesterday's report on problems (inability to load certain web pages, overall slowdown of connection, more) with NetBarrier 2.0, we received many confirmations:

"In addition to not being able to log into Yahoo mail, NetBarrier 2.0 now prevents cookies from being recognized on several sites and I am unable to access iDisk through the iDisk web site. It is also very, very slow. After disabling it the problems vanished." [Robert Paege]

"With IPNetRouter also in use, I have experienced the same problems: slow network connections and many pages will not load. Going back to NetBarrier 1.6 returns things to normal." [J. Sell]

"I definitely concur with other readers contributions about the slowdown I've noticed with NetBarrier 2.0. I decided to revert back to 1.6 to see if that made any difference. Indeed it did." [David Smith]

"The NetUpdate feature still doesn't work." [Dave Schaffelburg]

"At start up I can connect to my ISP only about 20% of the time. I also keep losing the connection to my printer, an Epson 900. After shutting off NetBarrier, all returned to normal. The previous version of NetBarrier worked fine." [Ernie Cooper]

Work-arounds/solutions Some of these symptoms may be solvable by modifying NetBarrier's settings. Even so, Intego should have done a better job of alerting users to possible problems with these new settings.

In particular, as regards problems getting password-protected (and other) web pages to load:

A reader replies: "If you go to Filters, and select the Surf tab, there's an entire section on cookies, and whether or not the users computers should send cookies. Uncheck this option, and NetBarrier should work fine." [Note: Apparently, this can also be turned off from NetBarrier's Control Strip Module.]

Jade Barton confirms this: "It turns out that NetBarrier now offers the new option of blocking cookies. Once I changed some preferences (NetBarrier --> Filter prefs --> Surfs prefs --> I don't want any cookies sent from my computer), all of my cookies seemed to be restored and I was again able to visit sites without logging in." [Intego confirmed to Brad Messer (who reported the problem yesterday) that this is the way to fix the symptom.]

John Chapman also confirms this and adds: "The manual explains these settings in reasonable detail (pp. 75-76) and indicates they may cause problems with eCommerce sites and sites requiring authentication. However, I feel this is a critical change in behavior that should be clearly stated upon install or activation."

As for the slow down symptom:

Brad Messer suggests: "This is probably due to the HTTP Info Filter (also located in Surf prefs) - which hides the brand of computer and the name of the web browser and/or the last web site visited. This filter does noticeably slow down page loading. This can be turned off the same way as the Cookie Filter. I am running NetBarrier 2.0 on Mac OS 9.1 and, except for a short delay when opening the NetBarrier control panel, have no problems."