I had someone ask me to tell them what firewall should a newbie use and I said ZAF. What I would like to know is that is or has anyone having problems with ZAF? I* read some where that ZAF wasn't friendly with Winxp and Dell comupter and and she has both and wants to install a firewall. She wont get online until she gets a firewall. LOL I would rather ask the people hear than read the reviews at Cnet. Them people will give a bad review to a great product at anytime. I read the readers reviews and seen someone say they had problem on his/her Dell WinXP. I'm not sure how it happened or what happened. I would of told her to use McAfee firewall but it's not so user freindly. There seems to be no way to block server rights and I remember ZAF having that feature. Thanks everyone.
The line of Zone Alarm products has been compatible with Windows XP since v2.6.357 and was fully stable at v2.6.362 - under normal conditions. Now, what do I mean by "normal conditions"? There are "a whole lot" of perfectly functional installs of ZAF all around the world. The product has a big user base. However, there are a number of people that do experience problems with it, as there are with many other products. With so large a user base, there are therefore a proportional number of people with problems, unfortunately. The latest version of ZAF seems to be much improved regarding install / uninstall issues, and for a Windows XP system, I would have no problem recommending it. But, a clean initial install is very important. Things to consider for clean install... Be sure no other firewall is either installed (third-party ones) or running (turn off the XP built-in firewall!). Disable any AV, registry protection, etc. before installing ZAF. In fact, a clean reboot with all those disabled right before doing the ZAF install would be ideal. (Making a clean restore point in System Restore on XP might be helpful, too, in case there are problems.) Install from an account with full Admin rights, of course. A large number of people (millions) install ZAF without issue. But, many individuals do have problems. In a way, I guess it's "luck of the draw" whether or not a single person's system is incompatible...
Re:ZAF and W2K... I do want to add one thing here for those who are considering using any of the Zone Alarm 3.7 versions on Windows 2000... There is a known issue with some W2K installations where ZAF/ZA+/ZAP 3.7 releases are causing problems. While it does work in many cases, there is a significant chance of problems with these versions on W2K. Again, this is just a general warning to users of W2K (only) to do some research first before trying any of the 3.7 releases of ZA. There are many threads regarding this issue at the Official Zone Alarm Forums. This is a good starting place to check those out: http://forums.zonelabs.com/zonelabs/board/message?board.id=inst&message.id=932
