I'm not always happy with Checkpoint Support

In fact, I would say that I'm only happy with them about 50% of the time. Here is an example of where I put in a ticket with support about Pointsec.

Now I will admit that I probably should have RTFM on this one, and that will become clear as I describe the problem. However, I also feel like Checkpoint support should have known this or been able to find the information fairly quickly.

The other day I set up a computer for testing purposes. I put Pointsec on the machine and I set up Windows Integrated Logon. Then I set up Pointsec to reboot the computer after a number of failed logons by setting 'Set Max Failed Windows Logon Attempts' to three. I rebooted the computer and then started entering bad credentials at the CTRL+ALT+Delete screen. For some reason, the computer wasn't rebooting and forcing me to authenticate at the Pre-Boot Environment. In fact, it just let me hammer away on the logon screen until I got tired.

So I created a support ticket online and described the problem. I'm running Pointsec for PC version 6.3.1 HFA4 on a computer with Windows Vista SP1. That should have been all they needed to hear. I chatted with someone online at Checkpoint and that person had never heard of a problem like this, and there was nothing in their knowledge base about it. But later on in the day I was reading the Admin guide looking for information on something else. Low and behold I find the words:

The Max Failed Windows Logon Attempts feature is not supported in Windows Vista.

Sweet. That's all I needed to hear. I wasn't doing something wrong, it just doesn't work in Vista. I'm a little surprised that the help desk people that support Pointsec didn't know that though. So now two days later I finally got a response to the ticket that I put in. The person suggested that I was setting the wrong configuration item. Rather than telling him what I now know, I decided that instead I would tell him that I was, in fact, setting 'Set Max Failed Windows Logon Attempts' to three. I'd like to know how long it will take for someone to notice that is says right in the manual that it isn't supported.

Update: The next chapter in this saga is here.