ZoneAlarm Free Firewall v10

According to the latest matousec test ZA Free passed 50 % of the leak tests. What do you think, is ZA Free able to block an outbound connection of a modern trojan or is it nearly useless?

 

ZAfree has no HIPS and cannot pass Matousec tests. You need to look for another solution for what you are looking for. Also passing Matousec testes means passing ... Matousec tests and not necessarily related better malware protection.

This has been discussed endless times in this board with all sort of trolling and useless disputes. Just search for "Matousec" ... no need to replicate it here.

Look at various tests, make your mind and choose the free solution you like most. If you look for a Matousec proof solution ZAfree is NOT for you, choose COMODO or OA (top of Matousec before been banned for money reasons)

 

ZA 9 did have one HIPS, it would offer to block files coming through IM's.

I hope it hasn't been removed from ZA 10.

 

Uuuhm... Never seen that...

 

I have been a long term user and advocate for Zonealarm to friends, family, and clients. I'm not sure if it's just version 10, I am going to go back to version 9 to check, but the past few months I had been trying to figure out why my computer would run at a snails pace whenever I was downloading files. Surfing the Internet and streaming radio or TV was fine. I found that it was VSMON again, which was a problem a few years ago, but they fixed it in the next version. I've been trying some new free to play MMO games and found that with Zonealarm enabled I could only get about 300 kb/s, but if I turned it off I could get up to 2 mb/s. I will post my findings of the downgrade.

 

Ok, just as I thought. I dialed back Zonealarm to version 9.2.102 and VSMON is running, but it's not hogging all of the system resources. I was still getting 1 mb/s download speeds. I will wait a few days however to be certain because some people have posted that it happens 5 days after installing it.

 

I leave my computer on 24/7. I run XP Pro (SP3). I have been having strange problems with gradually slowing internet speeds since installing ZAES v10.x on my main home system about six months ago. Once I figured out that it appeared to be an issue with ZAES v10.x I tried to find a solution. Rebooting the computer or shutting down and restarting ZAES v10.x seemed to return the bandwidth, reduce the latency and increase the throughput speeds back to what they should be. The internet speed slow down would gradually return over the days until I rebooted or shut down and restarted ZAES again.

I didn't necessarily see it before but after running more tests I am also beginning to believe it has been impacting my entire system performance as if it is a memory leak problem. What I absolutely know is that it's clearly a ZAES v10.x issue or conflict with my system but I still don't know exactly what the problem is. I can't say whether it is related to your issue. I really can't place the blame entirely on ZAES v10 and rule out other possibilities because I have read about known problems reported by MS with Windows XP and its TCP/IP code relating to high speed networking that major vendors have reported with their third party software firewalls. Therefore it could be an issue specific with Windows XP (SP3) and my system with ZAES v10.x running. It could be a software conflict. I run some other antimalware programs in real time - MBAM and SAS.

I didn't appear to have this problem with ZAES v9.x and I ran that on this same system for years with basically the same programs. I can tell the problem gets worse over time because my video and audio streaming such as with YouTube and other videos begin to stutter and lock up. I run speedtest.net and can see the latency and bandwidth being severely impacted. As a workaround I just reboot my computer every three days or so and the internet speed and system performance returns to maximum.

 

Something you may want to try (I can't recall if this was suggested already) is to exclude main ZA components (vsmon, zatray, forcefield, etc) from your active antivirus software. Some users have reported that this has worked in their configuration.

 

Thanks, I'll give it a try and see what happens. Being a tech, it's my responsibility to keep up with the latest programs. I'm thinking about trying Comodo FW and Avira AV since they are the top rated programs right now. I'd like to see how user friendly they are for novice users.

 

Don't want to start a quarrel on easy to use firewalls (due to fanboys) but, IMO, Comodo is not for clueless users. Probably a better alternative is the free OnlineArmor [with whitelist on]. Definitively ZA is the easiest to use for clueless users after windows firewall

 

That is probably why I use ZAES.

 

Thanks for the info. That's saves me a lot of time.

 

LOL... Definitevely your are not part of that group of users...

 

hi can someone tell me its memory usage(idle and peak).. their site is showing

 

Hi,

Good feedback, I may use this on a new light XP system I am booting up, have not used it in years.

Years ago, ZoneAlarm had one problem, that in an uninstall it would leave very annoying registry entries that could be problems for other installs. Can I assume that this is not a problem the last years ?

I sort of like ZoneAlarm, there may be more techie firewalls (e.g. Eset's implementation of Online Armor Pro, if they allow that to be standalone now) but it really was always quite pleasant. Plus you know you are dealing with a company whose specialty is firewalls. Their forum looks reasonably active and vibrant.
http://forums.zonealarm.com/forumdisplay.php?f=86

I am curious as to when you have to go to Pro or paid (e.g. on OA that was necessary for some port manipulation). Their product comparison is for the paid products.
http://www.zonealarm.com/security/en-us/compare-anti-virus-spyware-software.htm

From the fairly positive (ok, mixed, I just reviewed) comments here, I am going to conjecture that the free version is pretty strong on all firewall basics, but with virtually no HIPS.

Steven