Best Firewall + Antivirus for today? Please help

[Uncle John]

I have been using ZoneAlarm combined with a Netgear router for several
years (currently ZA Security Suite 6.1.744) {Previously I used
Norton\Symantec but it became over complex and error probe and ZoneAlarm was
nice and simple with a free trial]

Hi All Firewall Users

Last month ZA released version 6.5 and I could not install it properly and
was left with all internet access blocked. I could not uninstall it and had
to revert to version 6.1 by restoring a total system backup image. From the
huge number of complaints in The ZA forums and obtainable by Google search
it looks like nearly 500,000 users were hit by this upgrade just as if it
were a virus. Help from ZA suggested a radical uninstall of ZA, involving
heavy registry editing. After doing this I reinstalled ZA 6.5 and the
problems were identical.

While some ZA users have managed to install the 6.2 upgrade most have not
and in any case one has to ask whether it is reasonable to market software
which can only be kept up-to-date by dint of highly technical system
manipulation.

Have these security systems got just too complicated? Would it not be better
to have separate modules for firewall, antivirus and anti malware?

I am contemplating changing to the following configuration until Vista come
along

1 Firewall Microsoft
2 Antivirus Microsoft
3 AntiSpyware PC Tools

I would love to hear other suggestions

 

[Richard Urban]

ZoneAlarm version 6.5.722.000 has solved the problems for most of the people
who use it, including myself.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Lawrence J. Gardner]

Next time, mention this prior to uninstalling. I had the same problem and
was able to uninstall with no problems and reboot without ZoneAlarm, then
fully uninstall.

ZoneAlarm adds services and drivers to Windows ... you need to mark them as
disabled prior to booting ... this then allows you to boot normally and
cleanup.

Look into the Command Prompt application reg.exe, which can be run from the
Safe Mode Command Prompt mode. This allows you to disable ZoneAlarm
drivers/services and delete the Startup Run commands from the registry.

Keep this in mind.

 

[Plato]

Last month ZA released version 6.5 and I could not install it properly and

Use ZA version 2.1