Global Protect client issue - really annoying

[darren_g]

This one has been bugging me for a long time and I've just been brushing it under the table, well new year, new resolve, so I thought I'd ask the smart people if anyone else has seen/experienced/fixed this.

My organisation has the Global protect client installed on all our laptops by default, regardless of if the user is office based or remote.

Also, owing to certain, erm, inability to deal with complex operations, the client is in "always on" mode (because some of the people I work with weren't able to deal with clicking on the icon and selecting "connect" when I put the client into on-demand mode).

Every time I start my PC (and everyone else experiences this as well), I get two occurrences of Windows announcing "Global protect has stopped working" giving me the options to close the program or retry. Doesn't matter if I'm in the office or remote.

The client *is* working - if I'm remote and enter credentials properly it logs on without issue - but the same damn error messages occur every time I start my PC.

PC's in question are running Windows 7 64 bit, and Global protect is version 1.2.7

Anyone else seen this? Know how to fix it?

Cheers, and Happy New Year!

[ericgearhart]

darren.g you're preaching to the choir on this one man... I've been unable to have enough confidence to hook anyone else up on my team with GlobalProtect, let alone anyone else in the IT department where I work (we usually test by pushing first to ourselves, before we push a new technology to the rest of the company)

GlobalProtect has been a major disappointment for us. And we're forced to use On-Demand mode by the way, because two factor authentication is a requirement for us. Staying always on and relying on SSO with Windows isn't really an option.

[darren_g]

Yeah, I haven't got any choice - we've got so many teleworkers that not running a VPN client would simply result in removal of body parts I'm rather attached to. 🙂

I wish I could use on-demand, but I can't - it's tough enough getting some of the people who work here to remember how to log on to Windows, let alone remember more than one password!

And I thought the Cisco VPN client was bad. At least the version of the Palo Alto client before this "Global Protect" monstrosity just worked.

[ericgearhart]

We came into the Palo Alto scene just as the older client was in the process of being phased out! We're forced to keep around Check Point for VPN at this point unfortunately 😞

[cpainchaud]

Hi,

Sounds like your client is crashing. Did you open a case to get it investigated ?

[darren_g]

egearhart wrote:

We came into the Palo Alto scene just as the older client was in the process of being phased out! We're forced to keep around Check Point for VPN at this point unfortunately 😞

You poor bugger. I'm dealing with one of our partners who runs Checkpoint exclusively - the issues we're having on our link with them!

[darren_g]

cpainchaud wrote:

Hi,

Sounds like your client is crashing. Did you open a case to get it investigated ?

No. I don't see the point - it's an annoyance, not a situation where it doesn't work.

[RNC]

Its an error/warning message indicating software failure. If it had occurred here, I would have raised a case to get in investigated. I had a couple of things fixed in the GP client by raising them as issues with Palo Alto Networks.

"I get two occurrences of Windows announcing "Global protect has stopped working" giving me the options to close the program or retry."

[ericgearhart]

I understand the "open a case to get your issue resolved" way of thinking, and how customers don't have room to complain if they have not at least opened support tickets for the issues they're having, but far too often I've seen vendors of ours hide behind the "did you open a ticket?" mentality.

At some point I have to decide that I am not the QA department for the product or technology in question (in this specific case, GlobalProtect), and essentially my company's security posture is better served if I redirect my energy into another vendor's product with less issues.

We are there at this point with PA, with regards to the business need of providing remote access to our users as seamlessly and efficiently (and in a stable manner!) as possible. We have opened ticket after ticket with Palo Alto about GlobalProtect, but really at the end of the day PA has to conclude internally that they need a "do-over" and the client needs to be rewritten.

I've already had GlobalProtect 2.0 crash and act weird on me on my Windows 7 VM... honestly was this release of GlobalProtect really worth a "2.0" designation or are we just doing version creep? I really was hoping that a user experience person would be called in and GloablProtect 2.0 would be reworked in a lot of ways and a lot of it would be rewritten with the user in mind. Again I was disappointed...

[jmenon]

Its been said couple times in this thread but i will say it anyways. "Global protect has stopped working" ; This would be a considered a  bug ; Support case is the way by which you can help us know about the issues and get it fixed.

PS: Eric, looks like i need to come down to visit you and learn more about specific issues you encounter.

[darren_g]

OK, I've bitten the bullet and stuck in a support case.

Will advise of any outcome.

Cheers.

[ericgearhart]

@jmenon - Hi! You've come out to our headquarters before and we've expressed these views to you... honestly I don't need you guys to come out and talk to us, I just need the product to perform and be intuitive for users.

Go copy the CheckPoint Endpoint Connect R73 client if you have to... that VPN client seems to be pretty intuitive for our users and has served us well.

[MydisplayNameis3]

Hope others are willing to opine on the other thread about the GP agent issues so it shows it's not just an isolated customer issue... Globalprotect Agent for OSX - anyone else running into MAJOR UI issues?