Zone Alarm 6.5 causing the HDD failure problem?

[Gman]

I read in another post about a user having ZA 6.5 cause a BSOD. That
really got me curious as to whether or not ZA 6.5 could have been the
cause of my HDD failure notices.

I posted previously that my HDD was dying, "violent snapping of the
access mechanism", and that the mfgr was sending a new HDD.

To recap, I turned off the wireless radio, ZA, NAV and the violent HDD
seek operations stopped. Ran the Hitachi DFT and got a positive that
the HDD was in imminent danger of failing. Checked Event Viewer and
there were multiple warning entries for the disk. Made me feel better
about having to reinstall everything, till I read that post about ZA
causing the BSOD.

I have backed up all of my app and data files and Uninstalled just
about everything, except Windows XP Pro and Outlook 2003. All the
while, no HDD problems. I turned the wireless back on, installed the
free AVG, checked email and surfed the web, and after nearly a week,
still no HDD problems or disk warning entries in Event Viewer.

Could it have been ZA causing those violent HDD snap backs?

Or could it be that my uninstalling a lot of stuff eased the number and
length of the HDD's seek tasks and therefore it is running smoothly in
the first part of the disc?

Whatever, the HDD is going to get replaced, but ZA is not going back on
this machine.

 

[Kerry Brown]

Indirectly ZA may have caused the problem by the virtue of using a bad
sector on the hard drive. It is likely that the problem will return as soon
as another program tries to use a bad sector.

 

[Gman]

Indirectly ZA may have caused the problem by the virtue of using a bad
sector on the hard drive. It is likely that the problem will return as soon
as another program tries to use a bad sector.

Kerry, I forgot to mention that I also ran CHKDSK and it came up clean,
nothing bad. Does your comment still stand.

Just to staisfy my curiosity, I may reinstall ZA6.5 on this old HDD
(once I have the new HDD up and running) just to see if the snapping
problem returns. If it does, you KNOW you will all hear from me.

What's happened to ZA? It used to be a really good product. Saw very
few complaints about it, and they were generally cockpit errors, not
like now.

 

[Doug Knox MS-MVP]

ZA 6.5 does cause issues, particularly with Media Center computers, where it will cause a Disk Error message to appear when a user tries to watch recorded content. I would fully expect that it has other issues with regular XP systems, since Media Center is built on XP Pro.

 

[Kerry Brown]

Run another disk testing program to make sure. Backup your data first. Most
manuafcturer's have a diagnostic program you can download.

 

[Jerry]

Did you post any of this on the ZA forum?
http://forums.zonelabs.org/zonelabs/

 

[Gman]

Jerry, not yet. However, my past experience with the ZA forum and ZA
'experts' left much to be desired, kind of like the ZA product.
Nothing like XP and the MS MVPs.

Since my original post to this XP NG questioned the possibility of XP
causing the problem, and I then asked for ways to diagnosis the cause
of the problem when XP was exonerated, I thought I should come back and
report what I found, because the help and advice I received was
outstanding and very much appreciated. Perhaps my report will help
another XP user with a similar problem.

BTW, the laptop mfgr's tech support said he had dealt with this same ZA
problem, causing false HDD warnings, with other customers.

 

[Richard Urban]

I don't know of any software program that will cause physical defects to
occur on a hard drive. It is just a coincidence.

--
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!