norton systemworks antivirus & zone alarm coexisting on the same pc?

[chunkstyle]

hey

i've got a pc with norton systemworks 2003 that i just recently added zone alarm's free firewall to. i'm a relative novice, and can't make much sense of all these dialog boxes i'm now getting from zone alarm telling me that "such-and-such a program wants to access the internet" and "do i want to allow it?".

is there any way to make sense of what these various applications are that zone alarm is asking me about -- whether they're legit or not? most of the time, the filenames are kinda cryptic & aren't really recognizable one way or the other.

also, am i screwing up my antivirus protection thru norton systemworks by accidentally not allowing systemworks to update its virus definitions?

any advice would be appreciated.

thanks!

[pillainp]

There should be a button called More Info in the info pane that ZoneAlarm shows you when asking if a program should be allowed access to the 'net. Click it for details regarding the program and its activities.

If you do not plan to allow Norton to autoupdate, you should make a point of regularly visiting Symantec's definition download page and getting the definitions there. Typically, updates are released weekly (Wednesdays if I am not mistaken) but more rapidly in response to emerging threats.

All in all it might be better to allow LiveUpdate to do its thing: Options>LiveUpdate>Enable LiveUpdate.

[ThePoor]

with zoneAlarm you can preset which program to access the internet by.. program tab-->add---> select the .exe file of the program you know...in ZA hightlight the program's name, right click it and choose the green check mark(allow internet access), and if the program doesnt involve server stuff, do not permit it...

[ghost2003]

Norton only has weekly updates!?!? Thats a joke, kaspersky has them every 3 hours!

[glc]

Officially Norton has weekly updates, but they put out more frequent live updates when needed, I've seen it kick in several times a day when things are hot.

[catfishjoe_1]

You can manually update from their site daily(norton), and like glc said they do autoupdate a lot more often when things are hopping. I am currently running NSW 2002 pro with ZA pro and once you have it set up it is great.
cat

[Bullitt]

I've run System Works 2002 with Zone Alarm Pro for a few years now without any real problems. (I think System Works is a bit hoggish and that it by itself may be upsetting my current PC's digestion as it were) However, as far as playing together with ZA it's worked OK.

The trick I used for ZA was to set it up so any program that wanted to access the internet needed my permission first. Then unless I knew what the program was when the "OK to allow?" dialogue popped up, I would refuse permission. If I then found out that something wasn't working I would restart my computer and repeat the process but this time I would allow the access and test whatever it was that wasn't working when I refused permission.

It was a bit of a pain in the beginning but it wasn't that long before everything I regularly used was memorized by ZA and I stopped getting the dialogue boxes.

Best Regards, Bullitt

[catfishjoe_1]

Yea, what he said. After you do that and the process/program has been "set", ZA works like a dream. I know sys works is a hog but I like it for ghost and the disk tools plus the AV.
cat

[Karnevil9]

Personnaly I don't like the ZA free edition and always got rid of it after trying it a few times. I like Kerio's personnal free firewall better.
That's just me. I think ZA like others have a permission buttom you can press, or it has a create rule button. When you create a rule you are telling ZA that this prgram is always OK. This is the learning process for the friewalls. At first it blocks everything without permission, then you start to tell it what to allow in. This is for when you start your printer or get autaon updates from NAV or MS etc.
A general rule of thumb you can use, if you just clicked on an apllication to start and the friewall permissions come up, check details and more than likely it will have to do with the apppliocation you just started. You can permit or create rule. If you are doing nothing or just surfing and the dialogue comes up, you may want to deny it since you weren't asking for the computer or browser to do anything. Of course click details to see that it is not an auto update coming throuigh, or when on the net that the web site that you were going to is the one askking permission.