EXTREME CAUTION with ZoneAlarm 5!

thank you for the warning

Egads, nice catch. I just downloaded it yesterday but did not install it yet.

Huge thanks,
--TSK

Whoa. Close call. DL'd that the night before last and hadn't gotten around to installing it yet. That's enough to make someone cranky...

I had ZoneAlarm installed on my comp a long time ago. Eversince the 3.0 upgrade screwed up my registry, I've been using Norton Internet Security. IMHO, it's a better written software, but annoying because of the activation scheme.

Read a review on some tech site today that was saying ZoneAlarm was good, but that McAfee Personal Firewall 4 was better.

I've used ZoneAlarm for many years now. Hate to see it start going downhill now

Thanks for the heads up. I usually wait about 2 weeks or so to do major version upgrades, I was planning on doing it Monday if I didn't hear anything. I guess I'll wait for the first update now. Just curious, do you use or have you heard the same issues with the Pro version?

Hardware firewall would be best. If opting for a software firewall, I'd suggest Outpost Firewall Pro (found here). Both a free and pay-for version, though I personally make use of the non-free version.

Heh...my brother installed the upgrade on his computer and everytime he went to use AOL the whole thing would freeze up. Of course he blamed me, since, you know, anything that goes wrong with his computer is my fault.

I went through and reinstalled AOL over itself, then uninstalled AOL and reinstalled it...nothing worked. Then I turned of ZA and it went through fine. So to test it I upgraded on my computer and got the same problem.

And of course he was being a reactionary asshole, yelling how he didn't want to use the piece of **** anymore, blah blah blah...nevermind the fact that we've been using ZA since 2000 when we first got our cable connection and we've never had a problem before.

I did some searching, found out how to completely remove 5, reinstalled 4 and it's all working fine now.

yeah i was happily using ZA 4.5 Pro and on the day that ZA 5.0 was released i upgraded. That's when my new iXPS got its first of many blue screens. Even with the ZA 5.0 antivirus monitoring function turned off (by the way who is the idiot at ZA that came up with that retarded feature?), i have a feeling that ZA 5.0 does not play nice with any anitivirus programs out there.

I also noticed a major memory leak in ZA 5.0 in which when i first start the program, the memory usage is much lower than ZA 4.5, however after going to work and coming back 10 hours later, i see that the memory usage had ballooned to the point where my cpu was being locked at 100% and ram usage had gone up into the 100K range (keep in mind i have a linksys router/firewall at home as well so i know my ZA is not working that hard keeping out intruders- nothing gets past my router), and i am forced to restart ZA.

Overall, i'm annoyed with ZA, they seem to be heading down the norton route, just bloating their basic firewall application with useless, unnecessary features, it's just turning into one big piece of bloatware.

I've since uninstalled it and installed Outpost Firewall and have not looked back. Just pissed that i blew some $ on ZA, maybe i'll try to get that money back. Outpost is not as user friendly as ZA, but its only because it allows you much great freedom and flexibility with its rules based firewall system as opposed to ZA's application based firewall system. Yeah yeah, ZA does allow you to create simple rules, but Outpost has a pretty robust rules based system. In either case, outpost works like a charm, and they are giving me 50% off to go to them from another vendor like ZA

in any case, back on track, DO NOT INSTALL ZA 5.0

however, Zone Labs is supposed to be coming out with a patched version this week for ZA 5.0, but i won't be made a chump twice

I have never been a big fan of ZA, although many people are. I strongly prefer Look'n'Stop. Bad name, good firewall. However, it ain't free. It costs $40. To me it is worth it. It rarely gets updated because it is that good in the first place. I also operate behind a hardware firewall. Not just NAT but a true firewall. The hardware ones are best at keeping the bad out and the software ones are best at letting you know if something made it in and is trying to get back out. The new Tea Timer with Spybot Search & destroy has some firewall like features and is good at keeping malware from damaging your registry if it gets through to you. However, you must have some knowledge to make it work right. Wilder's Security rates Look'n'Stop as the best of all software firewalls and Kerio Personal Firewall as the best of the free ones. They also have security forums if you are interested try here. Wilder's forums

Their list of firewalls: Wilder's firewalls

A secure system is a happy system.

I've always used Zonealarm Pro, but I won't be upgrading to this version. I've found that a lot of other firewalls take up way too much system resources at idle. A good firewall, a router and common sense are the only things you need to keep your computer safe

Yes, I also use a HW firewall at home (NetGear's ProSafe). But need the SW firewall for the notebook at least when it ends up in a hotel.

I was testing XP on my previous notebook (Dell I-3700), when I used a hotel's in-room broadband service (first time I'd seen such, wanted to try it to see how it would fit for work access). Well, not five minutes after connecting the globally shared folder in XP (My Computer/Shared Documents) had files in it that were not mine! I wiped the system and got my second ZA-Pro license.

I still like ZA, I'll reserve judgement for now (first major SNAFU I'd heard for them - M$ has too many to count). The 4.x version had a reasonably good ad blocker, but will be going back to AdSubtract shortly (I liked the stronger blocking features, and the new SearchSanity looks cool).

Thanks Computer_Potato

I became disenchanted with ZA some time ago and have tried more than a few software firewalls. Now I am using Sygate Personal Firewall and prefer it. I've even got it installed on a home Domain Controller running Server 2003 and it works fine. ZA broke some things in Server 2000 so I wouldn't dare install it on 2003.

Zone Alarm isn't the only fish in the sea...

Lois

Well this is good info for me as I do tech support for a internet company and most people use ZA. The Smarter customer will find out but the other ones will just call in and complane that is not working and then get mad when we prove that is the computer making the problems.

I hate my job.

LOL. I do contract work and my next stint looks like it is going to be a 6mo contract with an ISP doing tech support. At least there is variety...

Lois

I'm going to stick this for a while... great heads up!