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