Look'n'Stop Freezes with WinZip

I went back to ZA Free 4.5 on my son's box because Look'n'Stop freezes his computer everytime I try to open WinZip. Has anyone experienced this problem? He is running Win98SE, with installed software: NAV 2002, AdSubtract Pro, SpamSubtract, and NU 2000. When this happens, I do a Ctrl-Alt-Del and it shows both WinZip and Look'n'Stop as "not responding". Then I try to End Task on WinZip and I get a prompt from Look'n'Stop for WinZip to access the internet. I click Authorize and get a bluescreen which Norton CrashGuard recovers from, but if I try to open WinZip again in the same session, the computer freezes and not even Ctrl-Alt-Del task manager will respond, the only solution is a reboot. Folks I really liked Look'n'Stop {lite on resources, simple & easy to use} BUT .. this is the last straw, if I can't fix it -- WinZip is my favorite utility and, what the heck is Look'n'Stop doing interfering with WinZip? The only reason I can think of is, I'm on a home network that uses NetBIOS to share files/folders, does Look'n'Stop think WinZip is trying to communicate with my home network? Even if it did, I have rules which allow local networking and filesharing, per the official Look'n'Stop FAQ. This just makes no sense: a similar app, PowerArchiver, will open just fine and Look'n'Stop doesn't utter a peep. This issue needs to be fixed, it is a really annoying flaw. I welcome any comments that can help me fix it, otherwise it's ZA Free 4.5 forever on my son's box. ZAF may use more resources but it doesn't screwup his computer when I'm using WinZip, and I'm not going to uninstall my favorite zip utility just because LnS has a problem with it. Thanks.

 

I do not know, if this helps:
Win98SE, Winzip9.0 and LnS are running just fine on my old machine.

Did you try a deinstall + reboot of Winzip, followed by an reinstall +reboot of Winzip ?

My Winzip never tries contacting the internet...

Thomas

 

Many times .. even tried installing WinZip 8.1 but LnS still has problems with it.

Try this: open a folder and highlight several files at once, then rightclick and choose {from the menu}: "WinZip, Add" -- does that work or does your WinZip freeze when trying to load and add the files?

This isn't an isolated case, I can reproduce it on another Win9X machine. And uninstalling WinZip or installing a different version of WinZip doesn't seem to fix the problem.

Thanks for your reply. I know, it seemed strange and weird fo me too, but that is why my son is currently running ZoneAlarm, until I can fix this.

 

Also, is anyone running a small home or office network using LnS as firewall? The official LnS FAQ explains how to set this up so that LnS allows filesharing on the local network. It runs fine for me but I am wondering if perhaps this is at the root of the strange behavior, if perchance LnS thinks some of these apps are trying to use NetBIOS to access shared files and folders on the local network, and interprets this as an outbound attempt?

 

Hi randy,

if you manually allow winzip in the application tab, before to use it, does it still freeze ?

regards,

gkweb.

 

Yes gkweb, it sure does still freeze, whether or not I manually add WinZip to the app-tab {with a green "allow" setting} -- darnedest thing I've ever seen, why would the LnS firewall driver be trying to scan WinZip? As I said, when it freezes, and I do a Ctrl-Alt-Del in Win98SE, the tasklist says "Not Responding" for both WinZip and LnS. Until I can fix it, I guess I'll have to stick with ZA because I don't want to uninstall WinZip. Also, as mentioned before: PowerArchiver is a similar application on my son's box that doesn't have these problems with LnS. This has been a really strange and mystifying phenomenon which I wish I could fix. I really like the low memory, system resource, and CPU usage of LnS, especially in older 9X systems.

 

Randy Bell,
Yes, this is what I am always doing when using Winzip! So no problems here... but I am not running a local network though. The files are always ziped to my local harddisk

Thomas

 

Thanks Thomas, I thought so .. this is the strangest thing! And with ZoneAlarm I don't have this problem -- only with LnS -- and I have no clue what is causing it. Well thanks for your replies and feedback. I really don't see what my local network could possibly have to do with it, since I had read the FAQ when I first purchased LnS and already configured LnS for a local network -- in other words, one configures it in similar manner to how ZA configures it, putting the home {local} network in the "trusted zone". In LnS you have to add the adapter MAC addresses of all the computers on the LAN and put a rule to allow ethernet traffic amongst those MAC's, which amounts to the same thing as making those computers "trusted" to one another.

 

Hi Randy_Bell,

I don't know if you have still the chance to do the test, but one thing that could be interesting to get is the Driver Logs, from the console window of Look 'n' Stop.
On time just after the first freeze, and another time after you killed Winzip.
If Look 'n' Stop was also killed because not responding, you can try to start it again, but I'm not sure we will get the correct logs.

It looks like it freezes on the first check when verifying if the application which starts Winzip is allowed to do that.

Is there a reason why the local network should be involved in this issue ?
If you have the computer alone, not connected to any other, does WinZip works ? or does it need some extra file on other computers ?

Thanks,

Frederic