Newbie needs help with PG and ZA problem

Hello good folks at Wilders

After heeding some helpful advice from Wilders members I am using PG free with a view to getting the full paid product.

All is going fine (I think !!) except yesterday I got an alert that dwwin.exe had prevented Zlclient.exe from being modified. Numerous Dr Watson alerts then followed before ZA was forced to close (latest Security Suite with AV disabled as I'm trialling NOD 32 - v.impressed ). This happened again tonight but curiously I have just logged on and the last alert said services.exe was prevented from terminating vsmon.exe and ZA loaded fine( oops as I speak still running but disappeared from system tray !!)

Anybody any ideas what's going on here and what I should do to stabilize the situation ?

Oh by the way it has only started since PG prompted me to visit the site and buy the fulll version. Is this just coincidence ?

All help gratefully received.

Jon

 

Hi Old Monk,

Is PG still in learning mode? When you first installed PG, did you leave it in lerning mode for at least three cycles of restart? If not, was was your PG install like? Just to get things rolling with the basics.

Rich

 

Hello there Rich

You were in fact one of those helpful members I referred to !! Thanks for the prompt reply.

Yes, in fact PG stayed in learning mode when I wasn't expecting it to but couldn't say for how many reboots. ZA has being running absolutely fine until yesterday. Did some Windows updates as I recall and as I say, the prompt to upgrade to PG paid appeared and then the problems appeared to start. Please be assured however, Im not casting any aspersions here - simply stating it as it appeared to happen. Have full faith in the PG guys.

Jon

 

Hi Old Monk,

Nice to see you here. A few more questions, just to try to understand the overall situation:

1) How long was PG Free running alongside ZA before the problems began to occur (e.g. days or hours, etc?).

2) Was PG Protection on or off when you ran the Windows updates?

3) If PG Protection was on, did it give you any messages that such-and-such prgram was prevented from installing drivers/services? If so, do you have a log listing of what Windows program was prevented from doing so (you would have recieved a bubble alert if it was blocked and you had bubbles on)?

Windows updates with PG Protection on can be tricky sometimes. It appears that the problem began after a recent Windows Update and some conflicts may have developed.

Rich

 

Hi Rich

It's late here now so if it's ok I'll post tomorrow on this.

In a nutshell.

1/ Several days
2/On
3/Nothing as I recall regarding drivers/services.

As I say I'll dig a bit further and let you know.

PS. Logged on again and no alerts at all !!!. I suspect you're right with Windows updates

Thanks again and please check back if thats ok.

Cheers

Jon

 

Hi Old Monk,

Hopefully the updates took and you are free and clear. Otherwise, I am sure others on this forum can help you out if you need to retrace your steps. I think that there has to be a special help notice about how to handle Windows Updates and PG. I usually turn PG Protection off.

Rich

 

Hello Jon,

FYI, I'm pasting this from Process Guard Help:
"When installing service packs or operating system patches you should disable ProcessGuard's protection. The reason you should do this is ProcessGuard locks some files on the system and also places restrictions on what applications can do. This might block some of the updates/installation from doing what they need to do and lead to problems."

I'd highly recommend an imaging program for situations like these if you don't have one already. It's so convenient to remedy your PC problems by reverting to some point in the recent past rather than trying to climb out of a techno hole. And if you keep your data in a separate partition from your operating system & application software, you won't overwrite your data when you fix your software.

Regards,
Stro

 

Hi Stro,

Thanks for the helpfile reference. During the Windows Update today, I forgot to turn of PG. I noticed that some of the update was blocked so I restarted the computer and reran the update with PG off. It seems like everything is O.K on my machine.

I think that many users will forget to turn off PG during an auto-update. This is somewhat of a problem, I believe. Don't know any obvious remedy.

Rich

 

Hi Rich and Stro

Thanks for your feedback. I don't have the machine with me today so I can't give you any further info really. However, I think the Winows Update was the problem but is it just a glitchy/buggy thing that is was Zone Alarm that was affected ?

It seems there are other threads on dwwin.exe probs so I'll see what I can learn there. If things get worse I'll post again.

Stro, I've taken your advice on board as regards imaging and partitions but those areas are still unknown to me but I will attempt to learn. In the meantime, would I be wrong in guessing that a System Restore would suffice ?

Thanks again

Jon

 

Jon,
As I understand it, Window's System Restore backups certain important operating system files so they can be restored if something goes wrong. I am rather sure it does not back up the entire OS, however. Perhaps someone with better knowledge can chime in with clarification.

System Restore does not back up non-OS files, such as your application software.

I became very interested in imaging software after both PCs in my house became totally messed up. I had to send them to the repair shop to have Windows XP reinstalled, then I spent an entire day on each one reloading software and data. I figured there has to be a better way.

I researched imaging software packages in large part by using the Search feature on this forum. I finally trialed and purchased BootIt NG from www.terabyteunlimited.com. It is an imaging program, partition manager and boot manager all in one for $35 (an exceptional value considering what imaging and partitioning programs sell for individually) and there is a forum at the website for posting questions (a big plus in my opinion).

Imaging programs take a snapshot of everything in a partition and save it to where you specify. I save to a USB external hard drive in case in the HD in my PC suddenly goes bad. I also save again to a dedicated partition on my PC. I have restored my BootIt NG images to reset my PC back to an earlier time when Norton SystemWorks stopped updating, when AOL Broadband wouldn't connect to the internet and when an attempted installation off CD of one of my son's games caused total boot-up failure of the OS. In each of these cases, I fixed my problem in the 8 minutes it took to restore the image of C: where I keep my OS and application software. (Data in My Docs is in the D: partition.)

Maybe you can tell I'm now a huge fan of imaging?

Once you create a second partition, Windows XP enables you to move My Docs (including all subfolders and data within with main and subfolders) into the new partition. This move is extremely easy once you know what to do. I have a Microsoft Windows XP manual that told exactly what to do.

Regards,
Stro

 

Hello Stro

Thanks for that. I'm certainly going to investigate this now. That's what I like about this forum - ask one question and you get led into other areas of learning.

Thanks again.

Cheers

Jon

 

I use Image for DOS from Terabyte. I have found it to be very reliable and extremely useful on many occassions. Highly recommended!

Rich