Re: ZoneAlarm v.7 working again

Timothy Daniels wrote:
"Timothy Daniels" wrote:
I recently clicked on an invitation from Zone Labs to download
an upgrade to version 8 of Zone Alarm Security Suite. After
the installation my computer turned to cold mollases and porno
sites started popping up on my screen. I finally had to cut the
power to shut down the PC. I uninstalled Zone Alarm v. 8,
and re-installed v.7, but the PC was still slow, especially my
Opera browser. It was really slow to load (~1 min), then slow
to react to the keyboard, then slow to render a page (~1min).
Merely shutting down Zone Alarm didn't improve the speed.
I finally had to unistall v.7, manually pick through the files and
then the registry, deleting any folder named "ZoneLabs". Then
I re-installed v.7 again. Now the PC is back to normal. YMMV,
but be warned about v.8 of Zone Alarm.

*TimDaniels*

On reboot this morning, v.7(!) of ZoneAlarm was causing the PC
to creep really slowly again. After a couple hours, I gave up and
went out and bought a 3-license copy of Norton Internet Security
Suite at Office Depot (free after rebates!).

Before installing the Norton, I decided to give ZoneAlarm one last try.
I had already eased up on the obvious high-level settings, so I went into:

Program Control -> Programs tab -> on trusted programs like
the browsers and ZoneAlarm itself, set Trust Level to "III" and
Acces to "Trusted" and "Internet".

Voilà! The old "speed" is back. In the evil upgrade to v.8, those
settings had been automatically reset to "Block" or "?", and ZA was
analyzing everything that moved. Then when I reverted to v.7,
those settings followed. I don't know why the PC worked OK for
awhile. I *suspect* that I was actually running a backup clone that
I had made a day before this happened.

I guess I'll keep ZA until the subscription runs out (in a couple months),
then I'll install the Norton. Meanwhile, I'll avoid v.8, since many other
difficulties are being reported about it in the ZoneAlarm forums.

*TimDaniels*




I would be cautious about installing Norton. It has garnered over the years a bad reputation for "bloatware" that uses a lot of system resources.

IIRC, there was a problem described recently regarding ZA and a recent MS update/patch. Check the ZA web site for the problem. I seem to recall that they had a work around that is basically what you did. Maybe there is a permanent patch that doesn't involve reducing the protection level....

--
Regards,
Hank Arnold
Microsoft MVP
Windows Server - Directory Services
.

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