Is there any down side to ZoneAlarm?

[Lance1971]

I,m on Cable modem and running WinME and have no firewall. I was told once you download ZoneAlarm it becomes part of your O.S and can not be removed,is this right? Does it slow down anything connection ect.. when it is running in the background all the time?I down load lots of music from BearShare only, will this thing srew that up?
Right now all I do is clean everthing out with Ad-Aware once in awhile.

Thanks
Tim,

[Kubie]

I've used ZA for a long time with DSL and dialup connections. NO, it does not become part of your OS. You can uninstall with no problems at any time. My speed is the same with or without it, so I can't see where it slows your connection.
ZA's Mailsafe has kept me from opening unsafe emails with a good warning.
Zonealarm has been recommended by alot of people on this site. For "FREE" protection, it can't be beat.
Carl

[audiyoda]

Agreed. Software based firewalls have their issue,s but ZA is the best of the bunch. Just becareful about what you let access the Internet (via ZA) and you are fine.

-Craig

[Floppyman]

I'm currently using the Sygate Personal firewall after using ZA and it works great too and is free as well (www.sybergen.com --go there to dload it). Which one of the two (zonealarm and SPF) is better in your opinion? Thanks in Advance!

[audiyoda]

Well I decided to put up and go with ZA Pro a few months ago -- I like the added flexability. But from what I've read about Sygate and ZA, they are pretty much equal. Of course once you've given permission to a program to access the internet, there's nothing stopping a rouge ActiveX control to use that permission. I believe Steve Gibson discussed that on his web site recently.

-Craig

[Byte 2.0]

my misguide take on on firewall software. I hate it.
keep in mind i do adsl tech support.

I have seen where ZA can become currupted and not allow internet packets pass.

I have installed ZA and used it myself before.

Try this.

If you use ZA, run msconfig. take it out of start up. reboot your PC.

here is what happened when i did.

I booted up, could not surf, or ping out. Start program, ZA. start up the ZA and i could surf. I could turn it off and still surf.

but with it out of start up, I could never surf on the web untill i at least started ZA up. After it has run once per boot, my computer didn't care if it was running or not.

So i ask, why could i not surf simply because i didn't start it up?

I have also seen where ppl had the security set really high and uninstall it, they they could not surf after it was uninstall. However after they installed it again, lowered the security settings, then uninstalled it, they had not problems.

honestly, if a Customers asks me about using a Firewall program, i tell them them i personally don't like them.

however i am going to try one out a guy a work loves. i was told to try tinypersonal firewall. I will go check it out, At the moment i know nothing about it.

Also for the record, my hardships with firewalls have been ZA and macafee.

I have also been told that when you connect but can't surf, it is caused by a corrupted winsock.dll files and i was told that deleting two keys in the registy can fix that, however i don't know what 2 keys to delete are. If anyone knows please post that.

[morriswindgate]

ZOne Alarm can be disabled by a few types of Trojan Horse programs, but first they must be downloaded by you to your computer. The only problems that I seemed to have after using Zone Alarm was that after a while it seemed to have problems starting up and would not initialize. Also if you uninstall it, you have to manually remove the original folder before installing again, as sometimes it will give install errors.
I personally use Sygate as my software firewall, I like the interface better and the logging features.

http://www.sygate.com/

[audiyoda]

Originally posted by byte
If you use ZA, run msconfig. take it out of start up. reboot your PC.

here is what happened when i did.

I booted up, could not surf, or ping out. Start program, ZA. start up the ZA and i could surf. I could turn it off and still surf.

but with it out of start up, I could never surf on the web untill i at least started ZA up. After it has run once per boot, my computer didn't care if it was running or not.

So i ask, why could i not surf simply because i didn't start it up?

Easy. That's part of the ZA 'package'. Stops a trojan horse from doing what you did. There are three parts to ZA -- the program, the minilog and the true vector service. A trojan macro can take any one out of the startup, but not all three without the user noticing. If you disable ZA, the true vector service will just stop all incoming and outgoing packets dead.

-Craig

[Hpro]

True Vector Key will left behind when unistalling - had my troubles too, couldn't make it run on Win2K talking about the ZA -PRO version 2.** can't remember actually the exact version but over two - It would start once and then just come up with a error couldn't start true vector -- that's why I know this file is left behind and also the Registry key - have uninstalled ZA quite a few months now - but I just managed this tonight a few minutes ago to remove the rest of it as today I had some other not related Win2K problems ( the first in a year) which I had to fix - something would prevent Diskeeper 7.0 from installing - and then also couldn't install DSK 6.0 anymore unless I searched manually the registry for the keys just to find out the the registry entries had been locked and there was no possible way to remove those entries - Access denied - unless I rememberd that Win2k has a second Edition of Regedit called regedt32.exe and it is located in C:\Winnt\System32 - but care must be used - this one can be very destructive - so if you can't remove a Keysstring because it's locked then open Regedt32 click on the Security tab then click on Add and then Administrator or you user name to the ones in there - but before make sure that you have already found the string entry because this one secures each string entry one by one...So there is no global Access for the string or key entries in Win2K Regedit
After you added your username to the Security make sure that you also mark FULL ACCESS and then highlight the String or KEY entry, on the Menubar select Edit and there delete - this will give you a warning that it can't be undone even not if you use the "last good know configurations" as it directly edits the registry and the Value will not be backed up..

That said, this was when I found the True Vector ZA PRO there and then looking in to running devices (Control Panel) - an sure there it was - not loaded, as the rest of the program had been uninstalled a few months ago - but it was still there - now it's now more there..One less to go..
hope this answers your question - I didn't find a second one - now Win2k rocks again and I can go to sleep as I wasted at leat 10 hours today here on this computer table...OH it's almost 2 Am on the third of December..

[denparb]

Only thing i've have noticed with ZA is that it may cause some problems with internet games. I play TigerWoods golf and it would block people i was playin against and cause me too boot from game. Besides that it seems pretty good for free.

[Hpro]

Yes the ZA problem has been solved in the meantime - it was that the True Vectors already had been loaded - the services of it and ZA was unable ot stop the services and load them again - so I stopped then maually and since then it runs fine - Back on Win2k after the big mess - first real big one in two years which was MY OWN FAULT and not a Windows BUG.!!!!