Rant: ZoneAlarm's new free antivirus messed up my computers!

[barnabas1969]

I've used the free ZoneAlarm firewall on all my PC's (except my HTPC) for years. It's been great. Recently, they released a new free antivirus, integrated with the firewall.

When my son's PC prompted him to install the new version of ZA, it asked him if he wanted to try the free antivirus. He responded by clicking "Yes". This was a mistake, since he already has Avast on his PC. It's a bad idea to run two AV programs on the same computer. I would have expected ZA to check this before installing another AV package on top of another... but it was my son's own dumb mistake.

His PC slowed to a crawl. We had to boot in safe mode and un-install Avast. ZA would not uninstall until we removed Avast. After we removed Avast, we removed ZA. Then, we installed Avast and decided to just use the Windows Firewall.

A few days later, my PC prompted me to upgrade ZA... and asked me if I wanted to try the new antivirus. I responded by clicking "No Thanks". ZA installed the update, asked me to reboot, and I allowed it reboot. When the PC tried to boot, it failed! I spent hours messing with it, and finally decided that reinstalling Windows was easier.

I'm so angry at ZA! They wasted several hours of my time, and I had to reinstall my desktop PC. I don't think I'm ever going back to ZA.

Anyone else have this happen lately?

[Venom51]

I haven't bothered using anything other than the Windows FIrewall since XP. I've got a good rule set on the Cisco 2821. If it gets beyond that it has to deal with not having any local admnistrative priviledges on the box. Those are enough to cover most everything. I don't run an AV at all.

[barnabas1969]

I've always liked the way ZA handles programs that want to establish an outbound connection. From what I understand, the Windows Firewall can do this too... but needs some configuration. I'm going to look into that.

Sure, I could configure my router/firewall to only allow specific outbound ports, but the router cannot detect which program is running on the PC like ZA does.

I'm just curious if anyone else has been bitten by Zone Alarm's most recent update. At first, I blamed my son for making a stupid choice on his PC. But then it happened to me too... and I chose NOT to install their AV software. And my PC was much more hosed than his was! At least his would boot.

[mark1234]

Like Venom I've not run ZA since XP days, and not even on my XP MCE2005 machine after an update prompt way back then caused the machine to slow to a crawl.

The Windows firewall can be configured to control outbound traffic, though it is nowhere near as easy to control as ZA is, or was anyway!