2 problems, any ideas?

[Louds3]

Hey all,
First off, as much as I hate AOL i still use it as my secondary email. All of a sudden when I click any of the aol icons to launch the program I get a Window's bar that pop's up with a yellow triangle with an exclamation point in it. The text in the window only says "Topic" and the title bar just says "title". This seems very strange anyone ever heard of this? I then get a brief hourglass and the aol never launches.

Also, and more importantly, I've been using zone alarm, the most recent version of the free home version for a while with no problems. As of late though, it occassionally won't let any traffic through. When I click a link, all that happens is the red bars go up in the tray icon box after a very quick flash of green. It appears that I send the request for a new page but it won't let anything through. WHen I shut down ZoneAlarm I have no problems. Sometimes it wouldn't let firefox load anything and I would try with IE and it would work, but not anymore. HELP!!!!!!! this is driving me nuts i really don't wanna keep disabling it. thanks a million

Steve

[glc]

1. Why even use the AOL software? Just get your mail from www.aol.com in a browser. Cut your account back to the $4.95 a month occasional use account (3 hours), using the webmail doesn't count against the 3 hours. You can even uninstall the software.

2. Uninstall ZA, run some kind of registry cleaner, and reinstall it. If you have a router, it's not essential to have anyway.

[Louds3]

Thanks glc, I think I will uninstall the AOL software altogether and the added bonus i guess is that I also stop all those friggin AOL processes, i think there's like 4 of them before I ever even open AOL after a restart.

As for not using ZoneAlarm, the main reason I use it is that with it installed my log still log's some entries of blocked attempts (maybe some of these are legit but i am not sure). Also, I am behind a Netgear router but I am using my computer wirelessly, with WirelessB. Does ZoneAlarm give me any additional protection from outside hackers trying to pick up my wireless signal, I am in a crowded suburban NY area. I have 128 bit WEP enabled, as well as MAC adress filtering but I cannot disable SSID broadcast as sometimes I have connection problems when I do. again, thanks a lot

Steve

[doctorgonzo]

ZA isn't going to help you with wireless security. If you have MAC address filtering turned on, and you limit the MAC addresses that can connect to your computer's MAC address, that should be enough when combined with the WEP encryption.

[Digitalic]

It sounds as if ZA may be blocking your DNS server. A check of your logs should confirm if this is the cae. To fix this, disable ZA and then open internet logs in c:\winnt\internet logs (W2k) or c:\windows\internet logs (XP) and delete all files.

Reboot and things should work Ok but you`ll have to allow\disallow all programs again, basically reconfigure ZA.

edit: To answer your question about any added security ZA or many other software firewalls will provide beyond what doctorgonzo mentioned is that software firewalls will provide protection from unauthorized outbound connections, something hardware (router) firewalls will not. In the event that a malicious program does find it`s way onto your computer somehow it at least will trigger an alert when it tries to connect to the intended intruder.

[Statica]

Would recommend that you look for updates to your wireless AP so that it can run on WPA.