Computer Issues!

[Tom 1960]

I recently purchased a new firewall/anti-virus/spyware program called Zone Alarm based on a friends recommendation. I was running off Norton previously. My friend told me to toss Norton since it's slows the computer down quite abit. I downloaded the program initially as a 15 day free trial. Cool, it worked great. I then purchased the program outright. In the meantime, my old computer was having serious issues with speed and it became obvious it was time to get a new computer. Ok, I've got a brand new one now and want to install the Zone Alarm program from the backup disc. No dice says my new computer. It states it's not compatable with the Windows Vista OS. Crap!!! I wish I had known this before I deleted the Macafee program which was already pre-installed on the computer. Question. Does anyone else here run off this program and care to offer some ideas or solutions? Frankly, I'm pretty pissed at this point and am thinking of getting my money back. Oh yeah, the telephone support system costs $3/ minute. Let me also add, I had the Windows firewall program shut down temporarily to see if this would change things. Again, no dice.

Edited May 10, 2007 by Tom 1960

[Chuck Nessa]

I recently purchased a new firewall/anti-virus/spyware program called Zone Alarm based on a friends recommendation. I was running off Norton previously. My friend told me to toss Norton since it's slows the computer down quite abit. I downloaded the program initially as a 15 day free trial. Cool, it worked great. I then purchased the program outright. In the meantime, my old computer was having serious issues with speed and it became obvious it was time to get a new computer. Ok, I've got a brand new one now and want to install the Zone Alarm program from the backup disc. No dice says my new computer. It states it's not compatable with the Windows Vista OS. Crap!!! I wish I had known this before I deleted the Macafee program which was already pre-installed on the computer. Question. Does anyone else here run off this program and care to offer some ideas or solutions? Frankly, I'm pretty pissed at this point and am thinking of getting my money back. Oh yeah, the telephone support system costs $3/ minute. Let me also add, I had the Windows firewall program shut down temporarily to see if this would change things. Again, no dice.

Have you tried "system restore" to get the new machine back?

[Aggie87]

I don't have the pay-version of Zone Alarm, but I do run the free version on my computer - it works great, and seems to be a good firewall. Sorry that doesn't help much, but maybe you could run the free version on the computer with Vista?

[Guy Berger]

I'm very satisfied with the free version of ZoneAlarm as well.

Guy

[Shawn]

My recommendation would be to go to their website and download the most recent version of the software (they may have a newer build that will be compatible with your Vista drivers). Installing a fresh version is often the key to resolving these problems.

I've used Zone Alarm in the past with few problems, it's a pretty solid home firewall.

[Jim Alfredson]

Screw Zone-Alarm. Download AVG from Grisoft. Best free anti-virus software out there.

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/5390#avg-anti-virus-free

[Chalupa]

I thought Zone Alarm is for firewall not AV????

[Jim Alfredson]

I think it does everything these days, which is why it is so bloated.

The Windows firewall does a good job. If you have a router (wireless or otherwise), it's built-in firewall will just as good or better as Zone Alarm. All you really need is a good anti-virus program and perhaps some spyware removal. AVG covers the first and Lavasoft Ad-Aware is great for the latter. Both come in free versions.

[Uncle Skid]

The version of Zone Alarm that I'm running is just a firewall, nothing else.

Its best feature: alerting me whenever any program wants to "phone home" -- I can enable/disable outbound access as needed.

Not sure if Windows firewall has that feature. Not sure I'd trust it if it did.

[Unk]

I bought the Zone Alarm security suite...TWICE...for two computers. I utterly hate it. I've never seen so much performance degradation from a piece of software. Slow, slow, slow.

[Swinger]

I recently purchased a new firewall/anti-virus/spyware program called Zone Alarm based on a friends recommendation. I was running off Norton previously. My friend told me to toss Norton since it's slows the computer down quite abit. I downloaded the program initially as a 15 day free trial. Cool, it worked great. I then purchased the program outright. In the meantime, my old computer was having serious issues with speed and it became obvious it was time to get a new computer. Ok, I've got a brand new one now and want to install the Zone Alarm program from the backup disc. No dice says my new computer. It states it's not compatable with the Windows Vista OS. Crap!!! I wish I had known this before I deleted the Macafee program which was already pre-installed on the computer. Question. Does anyone else here run off this program and care to offer some ideas or solutions? Frankly, I'm pretty pissed at this point and am thinking of getting my money back. Oh yeah, the telephone support system costs $3/ minute. Let me also add, I had the Windows firewall program shut down temporarily to see if this would change things. Again, no dice.

Tom!

I have used Zonealarm quite a lot but because for some reason(s) it gave me mysterious blue screens now and then (my computer crashed!) I removed it and I'm now using Windows firewall which can be activated via Control Panel. I haven't used Vista yet but I'm sure it's located in same place. Maybe you should try that one?

Just make sure to to install the latest security updates on a regular basis . Vista is most likely full of security problems!

Ps. According to the following link there is not yet a Vista compatible Zonealarm firewall yet available

http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/cat...ducts/vista.jsp

"ZoneAlarm products currently available for Vista users: ZoneAlarm Secure Wireless Router, ZoneAlarm Identity Protection Center "

:(

Edited May 10, 2007 by Swinger

[Tom Storer]

I have Zone Alarm Pro and it does a great job for me. No complaints. I find the firewall part easy to use, which is always nice.

I also use a program called SUPERAntiSpyware that saved my computer from a particularly pernicious spyware program that had polluted my system. Took me all weekend and the use of a fantastic site called www.bleepingcomputer.com to finally kill it. If you're ever swamped with a virus, spyware, adware or whatever and ordinary means don't solve the problem, I highly recommend this site--a guy on the site walked me through the problem, directed me to download various programs and run them, and spent considerable time over three days analyzing the log files they generated and narrowing it down to the offending files and registry entries. Efficient, serious, professional, and free of charge. It's like a mission with them to stamp out this shit. I was so pleased I gave them a ten-buck contribution via Paypal.

Edited May 10, 2007 by Tom Storer

[rockefeller center]

Screw Microsoft.

[Aggie87]

Screw Microsoft.

Well there you go. I think that will solve all your problems, Tom!

[couw]

Screw Microsoft.

Well there you go. I think that will solve all your problems, Tom!

it probably would: ditch Vista and get back to whatever you were using before.

[Tom 1960]

To update you fellas. I took Chuck's advice last night and hit "System Restore" back to May 6'th, the original date I had the new computer connected. It supposedly reloaded the McAfee program and that's caused unfortunately, a whole host of problems which I'm certain Chuck had no intention of causing. When I would boot the computer, shortly after the blue screen would appear with the icons on both the large screen and the bottom of the page, the screen would suddenly go white stating I could not connect to the internet. In both the upper left hand side of the screen and bottom rectangular box appeared, "Toolbar EULA". Whatever the heck that means! This would render all programs inoperable except for shutting down the machine. Nothing would work! I tried numerous times rebooting only to get this white screen with the same Toolbar EULA. I even disconnected from the internet, same result. I got Dell support on the phone and after a lengthy conversation, we placed the place the computer under "Safe Mode" and then hit "System Restore". Everything has returned to "normal" except the McAfee program has disappeared again. As for Zone Alarm, I didn't realise when I made the initial purchase that it wasn't compatible with Windows Vista. It ran great on the old computer running XP. I guess to save myself any further grief, I'll go out and purchase the McAfee program. Too many problems in such a short time, I don't need it.

Edited May 10, 2007 by Tom 1960

[JSngry]

Didn't Dell provide you with an installation disc for the McAfee program?

[Aggie87]

Didn't Dell provide you with an installation disc for the McAfee program?

I think most software comes pre-loaded these days when you buy a new PC. You don't get the individual discs anymore.

[Jim Alfredson]

Tom, seriously... don't put McAfee back on your machine. It's a resource hog as well. Are you looking for anti-virus or firewall?

[Dave Garrett]

Tom, seriously... don't put McAfee back on your machine. It's a resource hog as well. Are you looking for anti-virus or firewall?

Absolutely agreed. Both Norton and McAfee suck when it comes to resource usage. For antivirus software, I'll second the earlier recommendation for AVG - I've been using the full version for a couple of years, and used the free version for several years prior to that. You set it up and forget about it - it just works, period. And it will automatically download and install updates to both the virus database and the application itself.

AVG Free Advisor

[Jim Alfredson]

I have the full version of AVG on this computer (my office machine) and the free version on every other. I do not care for it's spam filtering and the way it interfaces with Outlook, but other than that, it's great. And it does the same thing as Zone Alarm's firewall (ie, ask you whether a service can connect to the internet or not).

[Quincy]

Absolutely agreed. Both Norton and McAfee suck when it comes to resource usage. For antivirus software, I'll second the earlier recommendation for AVG -

AVG Free Advisor

Another for AVG. Used to use Norton & McAfee. AVG makes for a happier computer plus it's free.

[JSngry]

Didn't Dell provide you with an installation disc for the McAfee program?

I think most software comes pre-loaded these days when you buy a new PC. You don't get the individual discs anymore.

True, but Dell should have provided some sort of "system" disc that contains all the preloaded software. At least they did as recently as 3 years ago when we bought our daughter's laptop from them. They've got to give you something to restore your system in case your HD crashes while under warranty or some other trauma occurs, don't they?

As for ZAP. I was using it and was ok with it until the Vector-Whateveritis file (vsmon.exe) somehow got corrupted. Then the whole thing went to hell in a big hurry. Rebooting the comouter means having to sit there & wait for ZAP to try and load, then cancelling it the second the attempting to notification comes up, then going to task manager to shut down vsmon.exe.

This problem could easily be remedied by uninstalling ZAP. But there's someting that's already loaded that won't let you uninstall it. Period. The ZAP has a workaround for this, but it involves 3-4 layers of manually deleting files and registry entries, as well as Safe Mode reboots. It's easier for me to just not reboot except when essential and monitor the reboot for the few minutes it takes to kill the damn thing before it spreads any furhter than it already does.

If you go to the ZAP website forum, you can find the point when the product jumped the shark for many users, and it seemed to be when they introduced upgraded version 6.x. That was the one that got me. Apparently ZAP overreached in terms of attempted functionality & created a product that held/holds some potential pitfalls in terms of coding conflict w/all things Windows.

My adivce to anybody regarding ZAP would be if you you have it & its working, keep it, be happy, and have a nice day (but don't ever do the free online upgrades until you "see how it's going" through the ZAP forum. That was my mistake, assuming that since it had always been seamless that it would continue to be so. WRONG.). Otherwise, look elsewhere.

[Chalupa]

Damn. Now you've got me freaked out about ZAP. My subscription just expired yesterday and now I'm wondering if I should dump it and just use my Linksys router and AVG.

[Jim Alfredson]

Yes.