Dean's World

Zone Alarm: Blech

Dean

Richard Bennett (my favorite curmudgeon) has declared Zone Labs, publishers of Zone Alarm, Public Enemy Number One. For computer users, anyway.

I'm on his side.

Posted by Dean | Permalink | Technorati Trackbacks

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Sandi (www):

I concur that ZoneAlarm is a piece of crap, although not just because of the Firefox problem. I can't use Firefox anyway because it chokes on J-Pilot which I have to use frequently. Mozilla couldn't give me a fix.

After uninstalling ZoneAlarm I had problems getting other firewalls to work, and also a few other software programs. It took a long exaustive registry search and destroy of all remenants of the Zone~~Crap~~Alarm to get things back to normal.

1.14.2005 7:04am

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Mythilt (mail):

Up until two nights ago, I'd never had any problems with Zone Alarm, which I switched to about 4 months ago after finally giving up on Norton's POS. If Zone Alarm is bad, Norton is 1000 times worse in its latest 2 incarnations (2004 and 2005.) And to get Norton off my system I had to do a data backup, flush the drive, reinstall windows, and rebuild things from the ground up.

1.14.2005 8:37am

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Brian (formerly bb) (mail) (www):

Oh, my.
I used to hear nothing but good about ZoneAlarm.

1.14.2005 8:45am

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O. F. Jay (www):

One word on free firewalls: Sygate. Lighteight, painless install, not "idiot-proof," and can be as invisible as you want.

1.14.2005 10:45am

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Mythilt (mail):

I am looking at the Sygate firewall and am considering it. Am also talking with a friend who might be able to score me a deal with a good used middle to high end hardware firewall, so might go the Hardware first line, XP firewall second line method.

1.14.2005 12:06pm

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Casey Tompkins (mail) (www):

Mr. Bennett is full of it. Full text of my post over there:

It's amazing how concentrated the BS can be.

I'm currently running XP Pro w/SP2 installed. Am running ZA with no problems at all. I've been using Mozilla/Windows for nearly two years with no problems, and have encountered no problems while trying out Firefox as well.

I've also un-installed and re-installed ZA several times, and never had to muck around with the registry.

Sounds like someone is blaming their problems on someone else's software...

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Addendum: for those who think that ZA is a "piece of crap," I have one name for you; Steve Gibson.

Thank you, and good night.

1.14.2005 2:29pm

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Richard Bennett (www):

Wrong, Casey Tompkins - go check the Firefox BBS I linked in the orginal post and you'll see dozens of messages confirming the fact that some versions of Zone Alarm will prevent new browsers from running and continue to do so after they've allegedly been de-installed. One comment I found over there: "Anyway the current version 5.5.062.000 of ZA suite is no longer conflicting with FF (although the previous two ZA releases did.)"

And I can confirm that the new version, which I just installed a couple days ago, will not install until all traces of the older version are removed by hand.

You're welcome to worship the ground that Steve Gibson walks on if you wish, but don't bullshit me.

1.14.2005 2:47pm

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JMG (mail) (www):

What is the saying? "Your mileage may vary"???

I've always had good results with Zone Alarm. I run a home network with a hardware firewall (different routers with built in firewalls), but I always run ZoneAlarm as a backup on each individual PC (the Mac I only use the OS X firewall built in, no problems yet).

I have had no problems with Mozilla, Firefox, Thuderbird, Eudora, or IE in conjuction with ZoneAlarm.

I'm running Windows XP on various CPUs (Pentium III-M and two different Pentium 4s, one in a laptop and one in a desktop), and even with that variety of applications, plus an older Windows XP Pentium III desktop that was left behind in the US before I moved to France, I have yet to have any of the problems described, nor the problems I've had using other "internet protection solutions".

So, in the end, "your mileage may vary"????

1.14.2005 4:51pm

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Pete Nelson (mail) (www):

I'm with Casey on this. I've used ZA for years, I'm running XPSP2, I use both Firefox and IE6, and I've installed numerous versions of ZA, without EVER having to uninstall anything or edit the registry by hand. It's never interfered with any of my software, once I tell it to allow that piece of software to access my LAN and the outside Internet.

If Mr. Bennett is having problems, it seems likely to me that it's due to some rare configuration issues or a bug that occurs in rare circumstances, rather than a general problem with ZoneAlarm. There are a lot of users of ZA, and I haven't heard of many issues with it. There are millions (at least) of different configurations of Windows hardware and software - testing every single one is beyond the capablity of *any* company (just ask Microsoft!).

Declaring ZoneLabs "public enemy number one" seems to me to be really over the top; after all, they offer a *free* version of the software. Really, this strikes me as just complaining about free ice cream.

1.14.2005 4:52pm

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Dean Esmay (www):

I have talked to so many people with problems with ZoneAlarm it's not funny.

1.14.2005 7:25pm

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Casey Tompkins (mail) (www):

Ah, but Dean: in what proportion to all users!? Heh. Seriously, is this a small minority of unhappy users, or a significant portion of all ZA users? Insufficient data.

I see I owe Richard a bit of an apology; I wasn't aware of the "older versions did work, but the latest doesn't" twist.

You see, I still use ZA Pro 3.0.082. It works quite well with my XP Pro w/SP2.

My apologies, Mr. Bennett. While I don't worship Steve Gibson {g}, I'll be happy to retract my statement that you are full of it. I was wrong.

I should be able to get this foot out of my mouth any minute now...

That said, has anyone determined whether any of this relates to SP2's improved firewall? I made sure that thing was off, but my ISP tech support remarked that sometimes even that won't do it, and some folks need to download some sort of patch from MS to really kill it, if desired.

1.16.2005 1:08am