Hatrack River Forum: Firewall (n.): A sort of wall found in Hell.

This is topic Firewall (n.): A sort of wall found in Hell. in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :

Sooo... Like some of you undoubtedly are, I'm running Zone Alarm, a generally well-regarded software firewall. Zone Alarm recently informed me of an available update, which I downloaded and allowed to sit on my desk for a while. Each time I booted, I would tell the nag, "next time. Next time, honest."

Tonight I decided it was finally time to do my duty for the security of my computer and upgrade to 70_470_000.

It goes through its usual jolly rigamarole, and tells me it needs to restart to complete its installation.

Splendid! Okay, my trusted firewall, you may indeed restart.

Restart. POST. Windows XP screen with the scrolling bar.

Windows XP screen with the scrolling bar.

Ten minutes later... Windows XP screen with the scrolling bar; clearly no hard drive activity going on behind the scenes.

Reset... Return to last working configuration... Zone alarm flashes a window at me too quickly to tell me anything. Internet connection is now held hostage; no icon on the taskbar to talk to the program. Running executable does nothing.

Attempt to uninstall ZA. On restart, back to infinte Windows XP scrolling bar screen.

To shorten a lengthy story, more than two and a half hours later, having crawled through Zone Labs' forums, I discover two things.

1. I am far from the only person who the most recent version of ZA has smacked upside the head with a brick.

2. My computer starts as it once did after a lenthy and arcane process involving Safe Mode, the exacting removal of several entries from obscure Windows folders, a registry edit, tracking down and installing the earlier version of Zone Alarm, and the sacrifice of a goat.

I don't wish to complain. Well, yes, I do, and I just did. But as I noted, I don't doubt some of you might be using Zone Alarm yourselves. Some of you may even have installed the most recent update without a hitch.

If you have ZA, and haven't upgraded to version 7? My advice is, don't. What I read in the forums suggests they really don't know what's up with this yet.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to make a full backup of my C drive and commence drinking heavily. [Angst]

Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :

I'm using that version for a week -- almost two -- and the only problem I'm had is it questioning programs I had previously approved.

Sucks that it made such problems for you, though.

Posted by Uprooted (Member # 8353) on :

Thanks for the warning.

Poor goat. ;-)