Zone Alarm free edition

[Uno Hoo!]

Just installed Zone Alarm on my PC. Should I leave the Windows XP firewall
enabled for double protection or could there be conflicts? (Don't seem to be
any problems so far after two days)

Kev

 

[Ionizer]

Just installed Zone Alarm on my PC. Should I leave the Windows XP
firewall enabled for double protection or could there be conflicts?
(Don't seem to be any problems so far after two days)

I ran the Pro version of ZA with the SP1 Windows firewall for several
weeks without conflicts, but then decided that there was probably no point
in doing so, and I disabled the Windows firewall. If you're running the
SP2 firewall (you didn't say) Microsoft recommends deactivating it if you
are running a third-party firewall:

" Evaluate the features of other firewalls and then decide which firewall
best meets your needs. If you choose to install and run another firewall,
turn off Windows Firewall."

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/security/internet/sp2_wfintro.mspx

Regards,
Ian.

 

[Lars-Erik Østerud]

Uno Hoo! skrev:

Just installed Zone Alarm on my PC. Should I leave the Windows XP firewall
enabled for double protection or could there be conflicts? (Don't seem to be

Just a waste of CPU and RAM. ZA does everything that the MS firewall.

 

[Wattsville Blues]

Uno Hoo! skrev:




Just a waste of CPU and RAM. ZA does everything that the MS firewall.

Uh, ok, but ZA does considerably more. If you have ZA running, there's
no need to have the Windows Firewall running too.

 

[Lars-Erik Østerud]

Wattsville Blues skrev:

Uh, ok, but ZA does considerably more. If you have ZA running, there's
no need to have the Windows Firewall running too.

That what I tried to say (might have been a bit to short

ZA does it all AND more

 

[Uno Hoo!]

Uh, ok, but ZA does considerably more. If you have ZA running, there's no
need to have the Windows Firewall running too.

Much as I thought. I'll disable it!

Kev

 

[skydiver]

Much as I thought. I'll disable it!

Kev

Just don't forget to turn on ZA before you connect to the internet! I
sometimes disable ZA when I'm offline, then may forget to turn it on again
before connecting. For that reason I leave the Windows firewall turned on
all of the time and haven't noticed any negatives except... I must enter my
FTP client as an exception or it won't work.

 

[Martin]

Just don't forget to turn on ZA before you connect to the internet! I
sometimes disable ZA when I'm offline, then may forget to turn it on again
before connecting. For that reason I leave the Windows firewall turned on
all of the time and haven't noticed any negatives except... I must enter
my FTP client as an exception or it won't work.

Why disable it? Why not leave it on, especially as something could still
try to connect to the internet even when you're not logged on! Seems
strange, you are disabling one FW and leaving another enabled, when you
could just use ZA and turn the Windows FW off totally....

 

[michaelxp]

Hi Kev,

Kill the Windows firewall. It's taking up valuable system resources.

Even with Zone Alarm or any firewall for that matter I highly recommend
using a system analyzer to find out what's really going on with your
ports. There are several out there and I recently wrote a review on the
one I liked the best. Here's the link to the article:

http://www.xpmaximized.com/archives/2005/01/sisoftware_sand.html

For the article I used the free version of the software.
Michael Huddleston
http://www.xpmaximized.com

 

[skydiver]

Why disable it? Why not leave it on, especially as something could still
try to connect to the internet even when you're not logged on! Seems
strange, you are disabling one FW and leaving another enabled, when you
could just use ZA and turn the Windows FW off totally....

I often run time-critical realtime calculations offline, and turn off almost
everything possible - including antivirus and the ZA firewall. Nothing can
dialup and connect my computer when I'm offline. I leave the windows
firewall turned ON, because it's a backup in case I forget to turn on ZA. I
think ZA may suck off some resources, so I want it off when I'm doing the
calculations. Everyone can do it however they want, and this is how I do it.
It give me a sense of greater security and comfort, because I know from
experience that otherwise I will be going online without any firewall,
occasionally, so this is best for me. Kapeesh?

 

[skydiver]

I run both the windows firewall and ZoneAlarm and it works fine for me with
Windows XP (SP2). I don't believe the advice to the contrary. The only
problem is I had to enter my ftp client as an exception in windows firewall,
which was easy. If there's a performance or resource drain, I don't notice
it, so it can't be large. I believe two is better than one. If one fails,
for whatever reason, the other provides a backup.

I checked out your software SiSoftware recommendation and prefer the Everest
utility instead - more concise, better organized, and 100% free. For example
if I want to see the various temperatures inside my computer case, Everest
has them all listed in one place (sensor). The Sandra Lite software did let
me know that one of my hard drives had "silent mode" activated, so I changed
that. Otherwise their recommendations for system performance were over my
head technically. I couldn't understand them nor the benchmarks etc. If I
wanted to devote my life to reading about such things, I guess I would
understand more. As for the disabled modules in the Lite version, who cares?
I don't. I'll uninstall Sandra Lite because I won't use it further, and
definitely wouldn't pay a penny for the commercial version (more modules).