Zone Alarm Trouble

I just downloaded and installed Zone Alarm last night. Installation worked just fine and then I configured it, but I'm having a very unique problem with it. I'm trying to surf the web and everything (I've told it to allow both my webbrowsers complete access. (mozilla and IE)) and Zone Alarm will stop me from browsing. IE says "Cannot find server." I try again just a few seconds (like 3) after that and it works. Give it a few more seconds and it can't find the server again, wait a few more seconds and it the problem is fixed again. It does this forever as far as I can tell. I know it is ZA because the problem stops when I close ZA completely. I've checked all the settings and it still does it. It's not an IE problem because Mozilla does it also. Any suggestions? I've already tried uninstalling, rebooting, and reinstalling it. Thanks!

Xierox

P.S. If it helps, I'm on 56k.

you might try putting the gateway ip address (the ip address of the computer that you dial into) into the "trusted" zone for computers... also, are you using the windows dial-up client or a third party one?

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If you have Zonealarm and Windows 2000, you should allow "Internet Information Services" and "Services and Controller app" (both windows services) access to the internet. If these services are blocked, you won't be able to surf.

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Do you happen to be running win2k?

Source

PS - still looking

Thanks for the replies! I'm running Windows XP and using windows' default TCP/IP to connect, no third party software. I'll try what you said about inputing the computer I dial into the Trusted Zones after I get off of work, but until then, any other ideas?

Another thing that's kind of odd is that I'll slide the sliders that control how strict I want the Firewall to be (there's two of them) to "low" and it says the firewall should be off, but it still has the problem.

I'm having trouble finding anything about this particular problem. But hey, you can always try a diff firewall.

Sygate Personal Firewall
Tiny Personal Firewall
Outpost

^All listed above are free, and sorry I can't be of much more help but there's a good chance somebody else lurkin' around here will be.

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Originally posted here by keezel
I'm having trouble finding anything about this particular problem. But hey, you can always try a diff firewall.

Sygate Personal Firewall
Tiny Personal Firewall
Outpost

^All listed above are free, and sorry I can't be of much more help but there's a good chance somebody else lurkin' around here will be.

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Thanks! I probably will try one of those firewalls if we can't get my current problem fixed.

I suggest OutPost (I have it) and it work's very well. That would be my suggestion to you if your current problem isn't worked out.

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Originally posted here by Spyder32
I suggest OutPost (I have it) and it work's very well. That would be my suggestion to you if your current problem isn't worked out.

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Is it free? I'm really only interested in a free firewall. (I won't be using it forever, in a couple months I may upgrade to wireless and then I'll buy a router.)

From browsing the ZoneAlarm user forums...http://forums.zonelabs.com/zonelabs/ it seems that version 5 is the most recent and is apparently buggy....most people recommend that you fall back to 4.5 and that there is still a link on the ZA website to get it. However, you said that you have the browsers set to allow for the internet...did you do the same for the Generic Host Process? I ditched ZA 'cause SP2 done broked it....but this site looks pretty helpful if you do get it working... http://don.hoover.net/index.html GL :D

~Edit, if you use a wireless router most people would still recommend a s/w firewall on any box that is connected through the router.

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Is it free? I'm really only interested in a free firewall.

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Yeah man, Outpost is totally free. At least, the version I linked to is free, but there's a version that you can pay for...

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Originally posted here by keezel
Yeah man, Outpost is totally free. At least, the version I linked to is free, but there's a version that you can pay for...

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Thank you very much. I think I'm going to dump ZA and try these out. Thank you for your help, everyone!!

I think I may be an idiot. Let me know if that is the case. I was also running XP's firewall at the same time as ZA. Could this have been the source of the problem? (I can't test it now, I've already uninstalled ZA and I really don't want to reinstall it just to see...)

Regards,
Xierox

Yes,

That could well be it, also what antivirus are you using? a lot of the big name pay for ones won't work with ZA.

Try setting up ZA not to start on boot up. Then boot, then start ZA manually..............that will probably work
:confused:

Well I have had it happen...................

Cheers

PS. I am sorry I cannot do any testing for you as I had to dump ZA from my XP box when I installed PC-cillin 2004

Just about any time you run 2 or more firewalls ( including antiviruses and spyware programs) at the same time, you are going to have problems. Now you can have 2 or more of any of these programs on your computer (excluding Nortons) as long as you only have one running at any time.
They have a tendency to conflict with each other.

In the past I would have said to plug on - and I would agree with Nihil and Mox that ZA and XP's firewall can conflict - in fact I'm almost certain they do. However like a lot of people recently I have dumped ZA (I was running ZA pro rather than the free version) as my software firewall for several reasons - one of which being the AV conflicts as described by Nihil (but using a different AV) - the other is that I'm really not at all happy with ZA's latest offering v5. Way too much being bundled in with it that I can see causing problems coupled with the latest round of exploits for ZA/ZAP I decided it was time to call it a day with ZAP. See the other posts for other firewall recommendations

Z

edit

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you might try putting the gateway ip address (the ip address of the computer that you dial into) into the "trusted" zone for computers... also, are you using the windows dial-up client or a third party one?

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incidentally... ZA/ZAP should do this automatically - or more precisely show a popup saying it's detected a new network and do you want to allow it. This step should not be necessary on a working copy of ZA

The new replies are appreciated!

Yes i too have 56k but you should really check your internet options to change some of the security do the same with ZoneAlarm too because it works fine for me! and yes it is free to download.

FWIW, I'm now using Sygate. I did download an use Outpost for a day, but in the process I did a large download overnight, leaving my computer unattended and I came back to it in the morning to find myself flooded with the Messenger popup ads. It made me a little curious if it let those through, what else would it. Sygate seems to work nicely and it's very easy to use.