Peculiar ZoneAlarm problem

[Knack]

I hope this thread is not completely beyond the scope of this newsgroup, but
I see no other more suitable place to post it where enough participants may
be knowledgeable enough to reply.

For weeks I had previously been able to get normal workgroup functionality
simply by shutting down ZoneAlarm (ZA) on the NT PC which was sharing a
dialup connection made by a WinXP PC that had ICS enabled.

Suddenly I no longer had basic connectivity between the 2 PCs even though
zonealarm.exe was not seen running in Task Manager > Processes, and ZA's two
services were disabled.

I had to fix the problem by *uninstalling* ZA.

However, knowing that it was previously possible to have a good workgroup
running so long as ZA is shut down, I then reinstalled ZA and was able to
again have a working LAN.

I'd like to understand ZA better; maybe be able to fix the problem an
easier way in the future if/when it recurs again. To me it's inexplicable
why ZA needed to be uninstalled earlier. Anyone have any ideas why? Anyone
know a simpler fix?

 

[Roy]

I'd like to understand ZA better; maybe be able to fix the problem an
easier way in the future if/when it recurs again. To me it's inexplicable
why ZA needed to be uninstalled earlier. Anyone have any ideas why? Anyone
know a simpler fix?

It seems to be in the nature of ZA to run flawlessly on some systems and
yet cause all kinds of head scratching problems on others, apparently
identical. It also seems to have intermittent problems too - on some
systems. I've never seen a complete explanation - I blame Vsmon.

The simplest permanent fix, if these problems occur, seems to be to
remove it utterly, and replace it with something equally effective, if
not more so. There are some excellent, free, choices available, I went
for Kerio - and haven't looked back. No doubt others will nominate their
own favourites, but I haven't needed to try any others.

Cheers,

Roy

 

[MJD]

I was running ZA on my new Satelite running XP pro. Everything was OK until
I used my computer on an outside (wireless) network, which kicked in the
built-in firewall of XP.
When I resumed on my local network, it seemed that ZA and the windows
firewall had major conflicts and the only way to fix it was to dump ZA and
use the full features of the Windows firewall.
Sad, but inevitable, I think