Augustus Caesar

You don't need to uninstall Windows AV. Simply disable it in Settings if you are having difficulty downloading or installing RailMaster. Follow my instructions on the RM Help Site detailed at the top of this forum, Hornby RailMaster and TrackMaster.

Hi Mark Absolutely no problem at all. Glad to help and pleased you have now got RM Pro activated. The conclusion could only be the program being blocked by Windows Defender (which you call Windows AV). During my years, and they are many, in IT I learned a very long time ago to 'track' the error step by step, look at the error code and go from there. It's not as easy as that though and an error code is never 100% accurate. That is the computer telling you its best guess at what is wrong. You may already know all of that of course and I won't elaborate. Anyway, at least you are sorted now. I do appreciate you coming back and letting everyone know you have had success. This should help others too if this arises again. Regards AC

Mark Your error message you display shows a code of 577. This is, or could be, a Windows Defender error while using third party anti-virus software. You say you totally removed McAfee and tried activation again. If I may, I suggest thoroughly removing McAfee with their own removal tool. The reason for this is because the usual uninstaller can leave active files behind which Defender can see as a PUP, Potentially Unwanted Program. It may not even be flagged. If you still have McAfee U installed try and find the aggressive uninstall file on their site. If you find one, it could be version specific too, then reinstall the AV program and THEN use the tool. That should forcibly remove even active files. The system will likely look for a restart and this should be done. Just for surety disable Defender within Windows settings and turn off all 'live' protection. Then have a go at activation. Hope this helps. AC

Hi Brian... Good to hear from you although not good to see your situation is ongoing re RM and the networking problem. When you were in communication with myself I was convinced I was giving you correct information and that a sync issue was the cause. That could only have been caused by RM itself as networking solutions offered up should have worked. They would have done, obviously, but I am rather annoyed with the RM author who has seemingly offered LD since around 2015 or whatever and a supposed major upgrade, as you also point out, in December last year. Obviously this is not forthcoming just yet and it may be some way off. Hopefully the guy will sort the bugs out for you and then come up with the upgrade. I sometimes wonder if the fella has reached his programming capacity or is just tired of the software. He still has a decent attitude toward support though so at least he might have something up his sleeve. Hope he gets the fix to you soon.

Windows Defender is always the program or utility at fault with this type of download. It can give several false positives. It's always advisable to disable this temporarily in order for you complete these downloads. It will not interfere generally with installations but take that with a little caution. You may find a warning that will stop the installation but will offer a button to continue anyway. Once done, if disabled, re-enable Defender. You can actually run Defender along with a third party AV program but not more than one other. Two AV programs, whether alongside Defender or not, is definitely not recommended. Each program will see the definition files from the other as a possible virus and can cause all sorts of issues. I do not install paid for versions of AV products or similar for malware or spyware. They are not required as the same component part for that protection is always free anyway. you pay for what I consider to be bloatware. The choice is yours of course. Your best options for free versions of these programs are a free anti-virus product, free anti-malware product and free anti-spyware product. I discuss these on my Help Site as detailed above. I am not associated with any of those products or their authors and have no vested interest either apart from helping you all out here.

Much appreciated Fishmanoz. Always nice to receive support. Thank you.

Not at all Rob. The Help Site has been up long enough for anyone to spot an email link to myself and the fact it is unrelated to Hornby and the forum just adds to the fact that contact to myself, in reference to the site and its content, should be made from that platform and not through here. I myself rarely even mention the site on this forum and, yes, of course there is a permanent link to it, but that was made through a request from Hornby and with permission from themselves too. Don't worry about it.

@P-Henny Before I received a private note from one of our Moderator team I had no knowledge of this thread. I had received no other clue about any information on my Help Site being either 'mistaken' or 'incorrect'. Suffice to say I have had a torrid week with my son being in hospital and such thoughts and processes around any other active area of my life had to take a back seat. No communication was received by myself to alert me of any 'errors'. If I had received such communication then the correction or edit would be made immediately. Quite why you felt it necessary to ask the Mods to contact me when I am a Mod myself is rather odd to say the least. Secondly, the statement I gave on site about the 'Restore' function was taken from data Hornby themselves released and my site was uploaded before I had purchased my own copy of the Pro version of RM so I could not have known it was published in error or by omission by Hornby. It is not currently installed or active on my would be RM laptop. Thirdly, to say this is an easy 'mistake for AC to make' should maybe have been worded a little better. I did not make any mistake and that particular sentence does me no favours. I will leave that there and will not think any the worse for it. Fourth, you offer up a 'helpful' suggestion as to the correct words for the site where the Pro Pack is installed on user's systems... that was not required nor is it seen by myself as helpful. I know what the situation is and that Hornby made the mistake, for whatever reason, and I know how to correct it. For user's reading this I have already made the correction and did not use your words, close to mine as they are. Fifth, self reporting a post wouldn't make me react any quicker to any situation until I had read the said post in my own time. We Moderators are volunteers and the tasks utilised by ourselves take up a huge amount of our time behind the scenes and being 'pushy' does not help. Sixth, following on to your follow up post I find that rather annoying. So, I have been led to water but refused to take a drink... I rather refute that. Take a look at my third sentence, first paragraph, and there you will see the reason I have not been able to react in any way. Seventh, you say your actions have fallen of 'death ears'. Rather, it should be 'deaf ears'. Just thought I would point that one out. And, thankfully and finally... you say at least you tried. Well, I can say you didn't try hard enough. There is a link on my Help Site for site visitors to contact myself if questions are raised, errors found or where suggestions can be passed on in relation to the site. That was the correct form of contact in order to get to myself from the the outset. Why? The Help Site is written with approval from Hornby for the use of certain content etc. and is absolutely not connected to Hornby in any way. So using Hornby's own forum to get in touch in the way you have is not the way to do this. Please use the email link on site if further contact is required about content based on that site. @ 96RAF As always your wisdom is acknowledged and I thank you for your communication to myself which brought this to my attention. I am unsure if P-Henny would apologise for being hasty or not with his posts and words given what I have said re my son but I do not seek one nor do I not. It pains me when folk seek answers within hours or even a couple of days to things that are just not that important in the greater scheme of things. I talk here of my site content and not the initial issue the OP had. I will leave this one for all to digest if they wish and no offence is meant nor taken.

I use Windows 11 Pro and also Firefox and Opera as my browsers but test using Edge when developing websites. I have no issues like either of those listed above in the two posts thus far. All links work well and first time. Any other behaviours are down to the machine you are using and how the settings are within. This could be OS related but are more likely your browser settings. Even the daftest and most nonsensical setting, where you would expect no fault to be derived, can cause a reaction such as those you find. Another is how the code is interpreted on your PC as HTML is done on the PC (when you access a page) whereas PHP and other server side languages are interpreted on external servers and downloaded to your PC as HTML. This is, however, beyond your control. What it may show you is how each PC can translate or inteprate languages as they hit your browser. If, for example, one piece of code is interpreted on your machine as it reaches you in a certain order it may be interpreted slightly differently on another PC if the code is received in a different order. This is usually down to how variables are programmed within the site code. Virus checkers can also have a baring don't forget especially if you have 'live' site tracking where the software looks out for malicious wares on each site you visit. The definition files can each interprate code differently and read such strings of code as malicious and stop it downloading. Thus rendering your site usage to be a little narky. This is where, occasionally, lazy programing and non-checking comes in... or doesn't if you follow.

A slightly late response but something worth adding maybe to Windows S Mode for the curious... A lot of PC's or laptops are being sold these days with Windows S Mode activated from the off. Microsoft say this version of Windows is for those with security in mind. In my mind this is purely a small gimmick from Micorsoft as the mode, as already stated above, only allows apps to be downloaded and installed from the Microsoft Store. The second point is that S mode will only allow you to use Microsoft Edge as your browser. You cannot install and run the likes of Firefox, Safari, Opera or any other commercial or free browser product. A further point is that once you decide to come out of S mode, say to download and install Firefox for example, then you CANNOT go back to S mode. Once you are out of it you are out of it. The only way back is to reinstall Windows. If you are running this mode in Windows 10 and want to upgrade to Windows 11 you can in S mode and then into Standard Windows mode afterward. Again, there is no going back. This can only be done in the Home version too as the Pro version does not allow the change.

Unfortuantely Chrome is just as bad as the others for this effect. Edge has bugs which kick in now and again and you have to effect changes in the settings to allow you to stay logged in, don't clear cache settings etc. by turning these settings to what you would not want then turning them back on or whatever. These bugs are well known and talked about across the web. Edge doesn't actually use cookies to save your passwords etc. within the cookie. It uses something called 'local data encryption' which is more secure. **Edge stores passwords encrypted on disk using AES and the encryption key is saved in the operating system storage area. This is the technique local data encryption. Although not all of the browser's data is encrypted, sensitive data such as passwords, credit card numbers, and cookies are encrypted when they are saved. The Edge password manager encrypts passwords so they can only be accessed when a user is logged on to the operating system. Even if an attacker has admin rights, or offline access, and can get to the locally stored data, the system is designed to prevent the attacker from getting the plain text passwords of a user who isn't logged in. One thing you should be aware of here is that this forum may or may not even be using cookies. There is an alternative for designers to utilise and I have mentioned them previously. These are session variables. Now, a site can use either or both. I only ever use session variables. Generally speaking a session variable is usually only available while the browser is open to a set of specific windows or data areas where that variable is required to store data for the site visitor. That data can be traversed across the site as the visitor accesses different pages but is usally well organised. Once that area is vacated the session variable dies and is never used again. Well, the variable is but the data is lost where the variable is declared as empty or NULL. These are not stored in any way by a browser and are purely server side technologies meaning they stay with the website if you will. Cookies are always stored client side (your computer) and are available while the cookie data is set for it to remain so. They can be killed when a user leaves a site, after a short term or even a long time after. They sit on the user's drives and can be used several times until they are killed. This is done by the site author or done manually by the user when that user deletes cache, browser data or cookies etc. from their computer. Just in case some don't get the fact there are two types of cookies... first party cookies are those generated by the site and its author/s and are usually genuine and harmless. Third party cookies are generated by those who generally advertise their goods on a site and which could offer some other goodies where you are asked 'why not try this'? kind of stuff. These can contain some harmful stuff but not viruses etc. as the files are far too small. You should turn off third party cookie options in your browsers but leave first party ones switched on as these will contain your saved passwords etc. I supply this extra information purely as an interest only objective and some may find it useful.

With all due fairness and credit Robert my experience is somewhat different. I don't doubt for one moment you have been on a different journey with them given you show the evidence for it but as I stated I have been down that route and got a totally different reaction. Microsoft are a law unto themselves as is very well documented across the web and I will stick to my own story. So it is how it works for some and not others. There is no particular happy state of affairs here but one experience doesn't mean to say this is how they work one way or another. Absolutely no disrespect to your good self on this one by any means.

@Robert-370275 While reporting to Micorosft that a program is not a virus may be a good idea it is seldom taken by Microsoft to be literal as just about anyone can say their programs are virus free. They do not have the time or resources to test all programs submitted in this way and I have also reported this prior as a test which did not work. The download, if you read all the posts on the subject, can be fickle. Some days it will download just fine and others it will not. Hence the reason for my post above which outlines bypassing browser and OS controls to aid in its download without interference.

There are not three firewalls in the Windows Defender area. What you are probably looking at are the three areas where your network is defined as Public, Private or Domain. Public should not be connected to from any private household or anything other than public areas like libraries or cafe's for example (where you would connect via your tablet, mobile or laptop away from the home). Data is easily exposed on these networks. Private is used for the network connections made privately in homes and businesses where individual computers or a small network of computers are connected to the Internet. This connection is always what you should be connected to in the home unless you can use the type below. Domain networks are for those systems connected to the Internet or larger networks via a server or similar and will not normally be found in a household. Having said that I do run a server at home and for good reason. So this should explain what you are probably thinking is a three firewall setup. It is not. It is a single firewall with three different connection types to the Internet and/or network/s. As stated one should not run two firewalls on any one PC/laptop or whatever. The ONLY difference here is that your router will have a hardware firewall built in which normally should not be altered unless you know exactly what you are doing and a computer will have a software firewall (Windows Defender by default). Two software firewalls will compete and a third party firewall will usually switch off Windows Firewall by default in favour of its own. This is where RM issues can arise as has been spoken of many times on here. Software firewalls can be overwritten by a virus, trojan or spyware depending upon its complexity. Just for information... you should never run two anti-virus programs on one system as one will define the other as a possible virus when it reads the other's definiton files. Don't forget... malware and spyware software usually will not remove viruses or trojans and they are different to anti-virus products. A virus is not a trojan, spyware or malware and each is defined specifically different.

Apparently all we 'know of' at present is there MAY be a program update/s in December but no-one has a clue about what they are, what they contain or even if any update is going to be made. Sorry.