Router and Zone Alarm not playing nicely

Hi all,
I hope I'm in the right section of the forum... if not, just yell at me.
:)
I'm having an issue with Zone Alarm Security Suite and my wireless router which is a NetGear WGR614 v6.
Now, here's the thing.
I have had ZASS longer than I've had the router, and in the days before the router, ZASS worked flawlessly. It restricted application access unless I told it it was ok for that app to act as a server or whatever.
So far, so good.
Then I bought the router.
My cable comes up through the floorboards of my house and into the back of a Motorola SB5100 cable modem. The ethernet output from the modem goes to the input of the router, and I have an ethernet cable running from channel 2 of the router to my PC's ethernet port. Two other PC's in the house access the internet connection wirelessly. Neither of these machines are affected by the following issues though, only the desktop machine.
However, now, when I unblock ZASS, for the first minute or so, no websites are accessible. Firefox keeps on throwing up an empty tab called "Problem loading page" with a message "Unable to connect" on it. But then, miraculously, after a minute or so, Firefox suddenly starts to get communications happening, and it starts finding pages.
I've also tried this with IE6, and get the same result.
It also seems to affect Thuderbird, although not as often. Sometimes e-mails will come in straight away, yet webpages won't load in FF. Other times, Thunderbird says it can't find the mail server, but then a few minutes later, it does.
And if I shut ZASS down (by right clicking the sytem tray icon and selecting "Shutdown ZA Security Suite"), all sites become available instantly.
So, it seems (at least, to me) that it's some kind of conflict between ZASS and the router. Neither one seems to be a problem in it's own right... it's only when both are in action that there's a problem.
So, anyone got any ideas?
I'm happy to supply more details if it'll help.
Thanks guys.

Does ZA come with it's own HOSTS file management, (never used ZA, so unsure).

You can try and rename your PC default HOSTS file.

\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc open etc and locate your HOSTS file and rename it .txt save and exit out and try your browser again.

Or disable the one that comes with ZA if there is one?

http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hostsfaq.htm

See if this may be causing your browser to take a long time to open..

Thanks Dalek.
I'll give that a go and let you know if I have any success.

Quote:

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And if I shut ZASS down (by right clicking the sytem tray icon and selecting "Shutdown ZA Security Suite"), all sites become available instantly.
So, it seems (at least, to me) that it's some kind of conflict between ZASS and the router. Neither one seems to be a problem in it's own right... it's only when both are in action that there's a problem.
So, anyone got any ideas?

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Nortons Internet Security, Sygate, ZoneAlarm are all nortious for doing this. It's funny how as soon as you disable the firewall all sites become instantly available. ;) Is your firewall left as default or did you create a *rule set*? IMO, Me personally, I would just uninstall ZA and configure my wireless router.

This may be irrelevant, but some NetGear routers come with "dual protection"

They have the traditional rules/configuration AND McAfee Security Suite.

I could well imagine that ZoneAlarm and McAfee don't play nice together :eek:

Hi guys,
Computernerd22, no rule set has been configured. When you say "disable ZA and configure the router", are you suggesting that the router can act as a firewall? If so, what's involved in doing that?
Dalek, I just tried to rename the hosts file but Windoze told me that anther app was using the file and that it couldn't be messed with. I'm assuming that that would be ZASS. And I won't disable ZASS right now as I'm in the process of uploading a 15MB file. When that finishes, I'll muck around some more.
Nihil, no, definitely no McAfee SS witht his router.

Yes most routers will protect you from external threats...by default.

You can pop holes in it as needed for various services.

How much RAM do you have in your machine...I have noticed machines with less then 512MB RAM have performance issues both with AV and firewalls once a browser is started.

A firewall on your machine is good to protect from internal threats...like say...someone on your network that is infected that will try and infected you.

This also can be mitigated by strong password policy, use of limited accounts...and regular OS and application updates.

HTHs

MLF

Morganlefay, I have 1GB RAM.
Still no luck accessing the hosts file, Dalek. I've shut down ZASS, firefox, thunderbird, everything I could find that I thought might be using the hosts file, but still no luck.
So, how do you make sure that your router is acting as a firewall against external attacks? Where do I check?

Log into the router...and make sure all incoming traffic is set to deny

The manual should help. ;)

It is not normal you cannot access your HOST file.....

Are you admin?

Try safe mode

MLF

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Audio2U

Morganlefay, I have 1GB RAM.
Still no luck accessing the hosts file, Dalek. I've shut down ZASS, firefox, thunderbird, everything I could find that I thought might be using the hosts file, but still no luck.
So, how do you make sure that your router is acting as a firewall against external attacks? Where do I check?

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Try..from the cmd prompt

Code:

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cd windows

C:\WINDOWS>cd system32

C:\WINDOWS\system32>cd drivers

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers>cd  etc

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc>rename hosts hosts.txt

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Just reverse it to rename the hosts file back to it's original...

Well, seems that yeah, this router does have 2 layers of firewall built in by default (SPI, DoS), so I guess I'll just ditch ZASS and be done with it.