Zone Alarm on XP

[S0lid Snake]

My friend uses the free zone alarm with xp. But it locks up while he is playing games. Are there any good firewalls he can get? I have no clue since i use dial-up and never had to worry about this really.

[Darksnake]

Black Ice
http://www.iss.net/support/consumer/BI_downloads.php
Tiny Personal Firewall
http://www.tinysoftware.com/home/tin...=solo_download
Sygate Personal Firewall
http://soho.sygate.com/products/shield_ov.htm
Outpost Firewall
http://www.agnitum.com/download/outpostfree.html
Windows Xp comes with its own firewall

There are plenty of others out there that will do just fine. I personally use black ice and havent had any problems with it locking up while playing games.

What game(s) does your friend play when it locks up?

[morfius]

Why is it that you are on a dial up connection and you don't have to have a firewall? Firewalls are essential and all computers connected to the internet/network should have at least one firewall.
But anyway, try norton net secure or black ice (isn't really a firewall though...).

[allenb1963]

I've run Black Ice, Nortons, ZoneAlarm, and Tiny. Tiny works the best of what I've used so far. If you want to 'grade' your firewall, go to www.dslreports.com and sign up for a free membership. Then go to the tools section and scan your vulnerabilities....Tiny is the only one that has given me a perfect score. Food for thought.

Even if you are using dial-up, you need a firewall...you can never be too cautious.

[avdven]

I've never had any problems playing any games (either on or offline) with ZA installed. Most likely, he needs to set the access rights for the game withing ZA. To do so, have him manually go to the allowed program list in ZoneAlarm and enable or disable internet access for the games he's having problems with. Another suggestion it to ensure that you're friend is using the most recent version of ZA. If he did an upgrade to XP, he will be required to reinstall ZA for optimum performance.

Also, are you sure that it's ZoneAlarm and not something else which is causing them to freeze? I don't see how a firewall running in the background could cause the problem you're describing...

AJ

[The_Magistrate]

I tried Zone Alarm, and hated it. I have had clients who were complaining about their computers starting up and running slowly, when I went to troubleshoot the problem, I found Zone Alarm was running.

The POS is the worst firewall I have ever run into. It takes up too many resources to be worth having. I have run the vulnerabilities test at dslreports, and Zone Alarm gave me the worst results out of the firewalls I tried. Tell your friend to switch to a different firewall.

I would never let Zone Alarm be the only firewall protecting my computer, I just don't trust it.

[neel]

Kerio personall firewall is very nice to. It's almost exactly like older versions of tiny, but it's smaller and a bit easier then the newer versions. Ehm... link: http://www.kerio.com

[The_Magistrate]

Kerio is the freeware version of Tiny. Tiny was developed by one company that split into two. Tiny is sharware, and Kerio is free. I use the old version of Tiny, but I assume that Kerio is just as easy. Tiny does a great job.

[Jacked_Up]

Wow, first time ive logged into this site in awhile, mainly because ive got my new computer up and running. Just checked out the free AV after downloading ZA. Now i come here to find out it aint that great. Well, ill look into Kerio. Thanks again friend.

[S0lid Snake]

He's playing Starcraft when it locks up. After he exits it freezes.