Zone Alarm problems

Re: List of Free Firewalls

hi, please forgive newbie mom if i do not post in correct place on this forum, i've been reading a lot before posting. before i post this message i will have to turn off zone alarm free edition in order to send. otherwise i will just be sent back to log in page. same thing happens consistently at yahoo groups, hotmail and ebay.

here is my sad little firewall story: been using zone alarm, ewido etc for some time but game sites that my kids visit occasionally results in handful of trojans. happily stumbled across wilders security "general virus and trojan removal instructions" which i followed to the letter. instead of just making sure za free was up to date, i downloaded free trial of paid edition.

while free trial was in place, getting on internet was sketchy and had to run winsockxpfix and reboot at least once a day. once it reverted to freeware edition, things got much better but i canNOT stay logged in to wilders forum/ebay/hotmail/yahoo groups. we can visit these sites but if we try to DO anything it asks us repeatedly to log in. very annoying. turned off za for 5 minutes and problem evaporated. reactivated and problem returned.

i have tried very hard to help myself, asked friends with more experience, read stuff here, tried trouble shooting at za site (thththppppttt!). i don't know whether to dump za or if there is a fix or is there a better previous version of za? if so, how do i download an older version? (using dell xp/firefox/ie)

thanks! misskitty

 

Re: List of Free Firewalls

it sound like ZA is blocking your cookies but i dont think the free version has that capability.

anyways, u can download previous versions of ZA here.

 

One of the moderators can probably address your problems better. But here is the link for the older versions of Zone Alarm

http://download.zonelabs.com/bin/free/information/znalm/zaReleaseHistory.html

It provides what was included with each version. As for logging into the forums, the website automatically logs you off after a certain time period. I have had to relog back in after not accessing the forum for over 5 minutes (I think there is a timeout feature on the website to prevent your user name being exploited). But that is probably not the same problem that you are having.

 

yes, after i posted, i saw that link for older versions in a previous post. i'm thinking it's a cookie issue also but i can't find my way around it and i do have free version. i've tried typing in these sites under tools/options/cookies and having them allowed but....

 

no, i don't think that's my issue. does anyone know how to contact a moderator? (blush) i'm totally not used to this kind of forum.

 

Sounds like the cookie control feature may be carried over from the trial version of ZA Pro back to ZA (Free) when your trail expired. You will need to reset your database using these instructions:

1. Boot your computer into the Safe Mode. {Instructions if needed}
2. Navigate to the c:\windows\internet logs folder.
3. Delete the backup.rdb and iamdb.rdb files in the folder.
4.Reboot into the normal mode.

 

bless you! i will try this right away and let you know if this works.

 

Hello, just an aside. If for any reason this doesn't work you could also go to the installation/uninstallation section of the Zone Alarm Labs Forum, and do a search for something like "how to do a clean uninstall" There have been problems with this Firerwall as of late because of upgrades and incorrect uninstalls, but they can usually be corrected with what is called a "clean uninstall" method. I used this method and it was pretty easy to follow and do. It involves going to the Zone Alarm Short Cut in your Start, All Programs Menu on your PC, and then going to where the uninstall is listed in the Short Cut and right clicking on it. After that you will see a window pop up with a list and at the end of a list you will see properties. Simply scroll down and then click on that. There is just one more step to do yet after this, but I will leave that for you to see (if you even do need to go to the ZA Labs Forum at all) as I am probably making this sound harder than what it really is. I promise the instructions in the Forum are much clearer and precise than what I have written here. You could also just read some of the install and uninstall problems people are posting about there and also find the "clean uninstall" method I mentioned as well. I hope everything works out for you though and all this won't be necessary. I just want to add that I used the older version of ZA Free 6.1.744.001 in the past, and liked it very much.

 

unhappy viewer! you ROCK!!! mystery solved! thankyou thankyou thankyou!!

 

Symptoms of problems can tell you alot about whats really wrong. So instead of giving a whole long clean uninstall instructions, I or any contributors on the ZA forums can give you more straight foward solutions. Not every problem people face in ZA warrants a whole full set of uninstall instructions (If thats the case, we might as well lock the ZA forums now and just post the uninstall instructions for everyone to follow )

No problem. Take note that ZA has an official forum where you can go to for advice and help:
http://forum.zonelabs.org

 

That is an interesting observation regarding the paid and free versions of Zone Alarm. I will remember never to get the paid version of Zone Alarm (it has ballooned into a rather big program now).

 

Actually the observation has nothing to do with bloatedness. In this case, the settings for ZA Pro settings didn't reset back to the ZA (free) default settings when the trial expired indicating a corrupt database.

And I would not say ZA Pro is bloated. If it was, I would have switched. Memory usage on my ZA Pro at the very most takes up at only 20,000 K which is one of the lighter programs on ym computer. Firefox usually runs at 90,000-10,0000K which is 5 times the size of ZA.

 

hey unhappy_viewer, I will be the first one to give you your props. You have helped me in the past and were very nice. Personalities aside however, you must admit there have been far too many problems when it comes to this particular Firewall. I personally even had trouble with 6.1.744.001 which I was told to use until new fixes are out for ZA, because it was considered one of the most stable versions. (BSOD after installing AOL AVS went away after uninstalling ZA) Sunbelt is having there share of small problems I know, but I had no trouble with an older version of theirs (4.2.3) when using it. Now if you look in the Comodo Firewall Forums you will see mostly resolved problems, fewer troubles, and that it is also has an excellent Forum for help when needed. They do a lot of beta testing to get it right upon final releases. Maybe I'm just a little frustrated, but I never read about so many poblems with a particular 'well known' software like this one, never had to resort to using an older version of any other software until new fixes were available, and never had to resort to some special uninstall method just so I wouldn't have any troubles later. The sad part is I liked ZA Free a lot, and realize many people are not having troubles, but my point is there shouldn't be all the ones there are. Take care, and again this is about ZA, not you or the very nice users that I have talked to in ZA Labs Forum, and here.

 

I think the reason why ZA has not work too well for everyone is because it isn't been extensively beta-tested by the public. ZA 5.0 was a major problem and since then ZL (having learnt their lesson) has started having open betas for almost every future version of ZA to ensure there is another level of check and to try to iron out as much of the issue as possible. Beta tests usually run for about 2-3 months, with newer test versions with bug fixes churned out almost once a week, so there is sufficient beta-testing time.

I beta-test every single ZA version and perhaps thats why I don't encounter problems with the retail versions since I sent feedback to ZL and they iron out the bugs I faced on my machine. Many contributors on the ZL forums also beta-test ZA and thats why they too don't face problems with retail releases.

ZL is trying to desperately pull in open beta testers and with the beta test for version 6.5, they even had prizes to give away: 10 Safe@Office 500W security appliances. I'd let you decide if that was a crowd puller.

Remember that if you take part in ZL's beta program, its not sufficient to post bugs and issues you found on forums like ZL's official forum and Wilders. Developers don't read these places. Its important to use the feedback form to send bugs.

I see ZL as a company that is pretty comitted to their users even if some people do not. The forum moderator is taking an increasing role in the forums and sometimes communicating between developers and forum users. Performance Issues (Memory and CPU usage), which everybody is concerned with, are always the top priority of ZL during beta tests and is always the first point ZL makes on the beta page. Free version of ZA is not going to dissapear anytime in the future. Newer features like OSFirewall were added due to an increasing number of people getting concerned with how new leak tests bypass traditional outbound protection and Gamers Mode was also added due to gamers (which make up a significant proportion of ZL's customers) complaining about lockups caused by firewall alerts.

 

Hey unhappy_viewer, I hope your right about their commitment, I guess only time will tell for sure. Are you saying OSFirewall was added in the last free version 6.5.731? And do you think this version is stable at this point?

 

Re: List of Free Firewalls

Cookie blocking? I find the concept of having a firewall block cookies totally ridiculous. Handling cookies is the web browser's job. And furthermore, I seriously doubt that cookies are even dangerous-- they are nothing more than text files.

Phil

 

Originally posted by unhappy_viewer

A clarification regarding my earlier statement. What I really meant was that the size (in MB) of ZA had increased signficantly since version 2. I did not mean to imply that the size of the program had anything to do with the corrupt database file. I also was not referring to the CPU/memory resident profile of the program when I referred to its size. When I refer to size, it is always the amount of hard drive space that a program occupies. That may or may not be related to its execution and resource use features.

 

OSFirewall is only available in paid versions of ZA and was available since v6.0. Version 6.5 has an improved OSFirewall with the ability to configure which sort of processes you would like to monitor or not.

 

Re: List of Free Firewalls

Cookie blocking was a feature found since early versions of ZA Pro (I think v3.0 or v4.0). Other firewalls like Kerio etc. decided to jump on the bandwagon because many users wanted such a feature. Remember at that time, not many people knew how to set the cookie permissions in Internet Explorer's settings.

I guess most program increase in size as they evolve with added coding. For example Windows Vista consumes more disk space than Windows XP which consumes much more space than Windows 3.1. I don't think HD usage is a significant issue in these day and age where large size HD are sold at very cheap prices. ZA Internet Security Suite which contains the whole works only requires 50MB of disk space.