This error message may occur if you are not connected to the Internet at the time you try to run Internet Update (NIU), or if you have defined a rule in your Firewall that doesn’t allow NIU.EXE to access the Internet.

This problem will apply to personal firewalls in general (for example Zone Alarm and Norman Personal Firewall) as well as corporate firewalls. A symptom of the problem is that Internet Update is not able to contact Norman’s validation and/or download servers, even though browsing Norman’s web site works fine.

There may of course be other reasons for this error, but checking your firewall rules to see if NIU.EXE is allowed access to the Internet, may solve the problem.

Norman Personal Firewall (NPF) and Internet Update

The firewall will default block/warn you abo outgoing connections until you allow them in your configuration settings.:

You should therefore allow outgoing connections from applications that regularly access the Internet (email, browser, Norman Internet Update etc).

If you have configured NPF to strickly, you can either modify the existing firewall rules to permit NIU, or delete the existing rules and create new ones (Open Settings, select Security and then Rules).