ZoneAlarm upgrade/update 70.337.000

[3Jane]

Anyone else have problems with this upgrade. The user forums are full of users with quite large numbers of system issues caused by this update version. The only way my machine would boot up with it installed was to use the 'last known configuration which worked' option, otherwise it just kept going through the p.o.s.t cycle. Managed to uninstall it and replaced it with the previous version and hope ZA/Checkpoint release fixes soon. Anyone who hasn't installed this upgrade yet, I would advise caution. There are some users with whom this upgrade has worked without any issues, but the majority of the posts seem to be negative.

[STEED]

Free version or payed version?

[Iceman]

Wow...what a trip seeing this thread...just last night I just updated to this version..the pay version...and my system twice now has crashed and on boot up states windows recovering from serious error....I knew it was because I just installed that damn update...I am going back to Norton I never had one problem with them...Errr! ...thank you so much for posting this. :up:

[kiwi_2005]

I had problems with ZoneAlarm 6 (actually ZA Security Suite 6) some of my software crashed & ZA would at times disable my network only 2 pcs, but the 2nd PC would have problems accessing the net or lan gaming!

Deleted ZA now use Outpost Firewall Pro ver. 4.0.1005.7229 (590) and have none of the above problems since.

[Skybird]

Using free version here. No update available. It seems the payware version functions as a betatesting for the free version.

:lol:

[STEED]

Using free version here. No update available. It seems the payware version functions as a betatesting for the free version.

:lol:

Same here, I got the free version and it's doing the job nicely. :)

[d@rk51d3]

Been using the paid version for 2 years now. No problems at all.

[XabbaRus]

Same here use Security Suite and it keeps everything out

[moose1am]

Security Suit is working for me with the update. Sorry to hear others are having problems with the update. Usually ZA will get things fixed pretty quick. At least that's been my experience. Lots of things can happen during a download and an install.

[jumpy]

Using Zone ALarm PRO here.
no instances of windows on its own crashing that I can confirm.
However due to me discarding all of my previous firewall settings I have had some programs crash when trying to use the internet following the update. Americas Army online, Sniper Elite, Firefox (not a crash just a denial of access) and punkbuster anti cheat software that runs under some multiplayer games. All have crashed requiring an 'end task' or they have frozen windows prompting me to reset the computer.
Going through the program control list and modifying the access rights of various installed software, assuming you know what you are looking for, makes things much easier too.
Using the right click option in ZA PRO and selecting 'game mode' seems to help somewhat.

I remember having trouble before with the last release if I let ZA boot at startup- it used to hang my computer (am2 3800+ with 2gb ram). So now I manually invoke the firewall before I initialise my internet connection and my pc boots prety quickly.

Now that most of my internet capable programs have been used at least once or given permission rights as above, I don't seem to have any further issues /touch wood.

[3Jane]

Using Zone ALarm PRO here.
no instances of windows on its own crashing that I can confirm.
However due to me discarding all of my previous firewall settings I have had some programs crash when trying to use the internet following the update. Americas Army online, Sniper Elite, Firefox (not a crash just a denial of access) and punkbuster anti cheat software that runs under some multiplayer games. All have crashed requiring an 'end task' or they have frozen windows prompting me to reset the computer.
Going through the program control list and modifying the access rights of various installed software, assuming you know what you are looking for, makes things much easier too.
Using the right click option in ZA PRO and selecting 'game mode' seems to help somewhat.

I remember having trouble before with the last release if I let ZA boot at startup- it used to hang my computer (am2 3800+ with 2gb ram). So now I manually invoke the firewall before I initialise my internet connection and my pc boots prety quickly.

Now that most of my internet capable programs have been used at least once or given permission rights as above, I don't seem to have any further issues /touch wood.

Yes, mine works o.k once the machine has booted and I have been starting it manualy afterwards.

[moose1am]

Fiind the ZA icon in the system tray at the bottom of the screen. Right Click the mouse on that icon and choose GAME MODE. Then stop all alerts from appearing and minimize the ZA screen.

Now try your games and see if they all work. This is the easy way to play games though the firewall. After you get through playing your games just disable the ZA game more and put ZA back into normal mode.




Using Zone ALarm PRO here.
no instances of windows on its own crashing that I can confirm.
However due to me discarding all of my previous firewall settings I have had some programs crash when trying to use the internet following the update. Americas Army online, Sniper Elite, Firefox (not a crash just a denial of access) and punkbuster anti cheat software that runs under some multiplayer games. All have crashed requiring an 'end task' or they have frozen windows prompting me to reset the computer.
Going through the program control list and modifying the access rights of various installed software, assuming you know what you are looking for, makes things much easier too.
Using the right click option in ZA PRO and selecting 'game mode' seems to help somewhat.

I remember having trouble before with the last release if I let ZA boot at startup- it used to hang my computer (am2 3800+ with 2gb ram). So now I manually invoke the firewall before I initialise my internet connection and my pc boots prety quickly.

Now that most of my internet capable programs have been used at least once or given permission rights as above, I don't seem to have any further issues /touch wood.

[Respenus]

This is the reason why I stopped using ZA PRO. For the love of god, a new update and a system crash. Not to mention, that it would block my internet connection if I didn't open a new browser window every 2 minutes. Hell of a way to lose 1h of browsing time :down:

I now use KAV and will use KIS after we move house. I haven't had a problem, maybe once in a while and with a half-stable release (then the kind forums guys pointed me to a more stabile version).

I myself recommend KIS, sure it's expensive, but the extra bucks, means you won't be spending them on Aspirin for your ZA headaches.

[XabbaRus]

You mst have had ZA set up worng as I have it on all the time and it never stops me browsing. I have it set very tight so I have to manually configure all the bits like whther a site can store a cookie or run animations and what not.

[Syxx_Killer]

I used Zone Alarm (Free) for years. Loved it and didn't really think of using anything else. Not even the Nvidia firewall that came with my motherboard (liked it but liked ZA better). When I updated to (I'm guessing) their last version which looked different things went south. It had the new company's logo on it. Whatever they did, though, it messed my computer up good. It basically held it hostage, if you will. When I would start my computer, ZA wouldn't load. Now, to get my display drivers to load ZA had to load. If they didn't the computer would lock up after a few minutes. It took quite a few resets to get ZA to load. Once it did, I took it off and have been using the Nvidia firewall ever since. I don't think I could, or would, risk using ZA ever again.:damn:

[Dimitrius07]

Zone alarm is good firewall but i prefer Agnitum Outpost Firewall together with NOD 32. "The mother and father" of the pc defence for my opinion ;)

[robbo180265]

I've been using ZA(payware) and have had nothing but trouble with it, just uninstalled it in fact. It blocked websites I wanted to see(or made the page reload over and over untill IE crashed, even after I added the site to its sitelist. It made my pooter take ages to boot up, and dumped me out of online games.

Never going back to it :damn:

[kiwi_2005]

Nortons 360 is good, nothing like their prevous antivirus, Nortons 360 is built from the ground up, runs fast, stays out of the way not annoying you with enabling/disabling just set and forget.

All in one Nortons 360 comes with the usual, antivirus/firewall/anti-spam,Fraud monitoring, Anti Phishing and theres also an add on pack you can download of their site that installs more goodies

Most importantly it runs on Vista.

[Dimitrius07]

kiwi_2005

One thing that a don`t like in Norton is the fact that the program eat large ammount of memory :doh:

[Iceman]

After uninstalling this product I have had Zero problems and not looking back.Terrible very disappointed with it...asked for a refund after only having it a few months...they told me to piss off...so I can take a hint :)

Norton is only program where I have not seen issues...

[XabbaRus]

I haven't had any of these problems with zone alarm though I won't be taking the latest update till stability issues are sorted.

I have mine locked pretty tight but if it won't allow a certain webpage to be loaded then it is because I have to manually allow for cookies and other stuff.

[kiwi_2005]

Methodology
Each firewall was tested twice against 26 leak tests - once with its default, out-of-the-box settings, and once with its highest security settings. Each firewall was then awarded an overall score derived from its pass/fail result against each test. The higher the score, the better the firewall performed against the range of leak tests. For every test the firewall passed on its default settings it gained 125 points. For those tests that the firewall failed on its default settings but passed on its highest security settings it gained 100 points. The number of tests per firewall settings is 77. Thus the maximum score is 77 * 125 = 9625 points. The tested firewalls were installed on Windows XP SP2, Internet Explorer 6.0 was set as the default browser and was running during the tests.
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a390/Kiwi_Frank/Leaktest-1.jpg


The clear winners of our tests are Comodo Firewall Pro 2.4.16.174 and Jetico Personal Firewall 2.0.0.16 beta. Whilst Comodo is the best on its highest security settings, Jetico has the best default settings configuration. On the highest security settings, Comodo passed all leak-tests, Jetico failed against Breakout and pcAudit. These results are excellent! What is more, both firewalls are still in development and we can expect that they will pass all tests in their future versions. Congratulations!

Another important result of our tests is firewall scoring against FPR. FPR stands for Fake Protection Revealer. This leak-test was implemented to reveal cheating on leak-tests. Outpost Firewall PRO 4.0 (971.584.079) was convicted of such cheating. It passes all leak-tests except FPR because of the implementation of user mode hooks (ring3) for security purposes. Our article Design of ideal personal firewall clearly says that ring3 hooks can not be used for security critical features. FPR does nothing but unhooks ring3 hooks which is always possible and thus bypasses such protection. This means that Outpost Firewall PRO cheats to be very strong against leak-tests but in fact it is very weak against real malware. The vendor of Outpost claims that Outpost is strong against the malware on this field but the reality is quite different. Another firewall that implements fake protection using user mode hooks only to bypass some leak-tests is Privatefirewall 5.0.8.11. Other firewalls that use ring3 hooks improperly are Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall 4.3.268 and Look 'n' Stop 2.05p2. However, their hooks did not affect their test results that much. And unlike Outpost, their hooks were not implemented to mislead the end-users.

Fifteen of the tested firewalls were marked with Very poor or None anti-leak protection. This result is quite worrying because it shows that even today, when the malware programs are very sophisticated, still a lot of vendors simply do not care about the outbound connection control seriously.
Back to contents
Curiosities and interesting notes

Some firewalls totally failed tests made against their default settings but their results on the highest security settings were much better. Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0.0.303 was the product with the biggest difference between the default settings score and the highest security settings score, this have changed since version 6.0.1.411. Another such product is Safety.Net.

Some products like BitDefender, F-Secure, McAfee, Panda, etc. include antivirus engines. The sad and funny thing in once is that lots of them mark leak-testing software as viruses or malware. The better engines mark leak-testing software only as potentially unwanted software, which is much better, but still it seems that these products worry about leak-tests. Why? To perform our tests against these products we had to switch antivirus engines of such products off to get real results of their anti-leak protection. Such behaviour can be also marked as cheating on leak-tests. Fortunately, it was always possible to disable the antivirus protection.

The most successful leak-tests was OSfwbypass. It failed only against six firewalls on its own and only against two when run via FPR. Good job! Another very successful leak-tests were Breakout, 3rd test of CPILSuite and PCFlank.

The least successful leak-test was LeakTest. It was able to score only against Windows XP SP2 firewall and against the default settings of a few other firewalls.

Testing Blink with FPR was not easy. Blink implements hundreds of user mode hooks in very unusual way. FPR was implemented to fix hooks that are at most 12 bytes long. We had to make a special compilation of FPR to be able to run it against Blink.

Testing ZoneAlarm Pro 7.0.337.000 was also a difficult task in some cases. ZoneAlarm implements anti-spyware scanning engine that we were not able to disable in its graphic user interface. When every single component of ZoneAlarm was turned off, some leak-tests were still forbidden to run. This was both weird and unpleasant. Why there was no chance for users to make their own decision? Anyway, some advanced techniques were used to bypass anti-spyware protection of ZoneAlarm and thus finally, all tests were performed successfully.

Another strange thing with ZoneAlarm is that it might seem that it passes PCFlank test, but in fact it does not. This leak-test tries to establish network connection with www.pcflank.com (http://www.pcflank.com). ZoneAlarm invisibly includes this Internet address in its Spy Site Blocking list. So, if PCFlank contacted another website instead of the original one, it would bypass the protection. ZoneAlarm does not block the technique PCFlank presents, it blocks the target website which is harmless in fact.


Comodo Firewall is free you can dl the pro version for 30days then to use it after the 30days all you have to do is register.
Doesn't run on Vista.