Zone Alarm 3 released

[TOAD6147]

Pshawn5,
From previous post:
"The 3rd party cookie blocking seems fine but is there any way to stop it displaying an alert that "Your privacy settings have affected this website". I don't want anything popping up apart from when a program is asking for permission. *EDIT* I did miss something, a pretty obvious checkbox to switch the alerts off for cookies."

[Richard Cranium]

errr, I thought your were supposed to shut down ALL running programs, timers, power-savers etc when adding ANY new software.. Is this not standard procedure ?

[Dudster]

I spose that is the normal procedure but I never shut ZA down when installing things (though I do close everything else though on a fresh boot which I always do before installing something, there's only really ZA and my anti-virus running) and I've never shut ZA down in the past when installing newer versions of it (can't remember if I read that that was the best way with versions prior to 3.0 but I did it anyway). Now that I think about it, I think I will shut down ZA along with everything else when installing new software.

Since my last post, I went ahead and installed ZA Pro 3.0 in my machine and am fairly happy with it (I haven't noticed any slowing down of anything and the machine I installed it on first that did seem slower from it is now back to normal, maybe I set Program Control to high too soon as I've now set it back to medium). The ad blocking feature's a bit wonky (I'm guessing there'll be a new version soon). I've not had any popups since installing it but the animated ad blocking only blocks some, not all and also had the effect of stopping avatars and smileys animating on at least these forums. I disabled blocking of animated ads, the ads and avatars now animate but the smileys still don't so I can't tell a from a and these now look a bit funny (the rolleyes is stuck looking down and the siren looks like one of those egyptian hats)

Also, it seems ZA is now a severe resource hog, I only checked this morning and was shocked to find my resources at 80% on a fresh boot and my AV only uses 2%. I had 90% free on bootup before upgrading ZA. I guess they're not concerned with things like resources with fewer people using Win98/ME as time goes by.

Edit - ah, I can tell a from a , the is a brighter yellow.

Edit - Oh yeah, I also get a lot more "Done loading but with errors" pages in IE since installing 3.0 and sometimes bits of html code are visable when they obviously shouldn't be.

[Volvo79]

Hi. I'm new.

I run XP pro on my machine connected to a Linksys cable modem and a Linksys four port router. I just put the free version of ZA on my machine. I am trying to figure out how I should configure the settings. I am more curious about stuff like: Services and Controller app and Generic Host Process... Should I allow? Should the Pass Lock be on or off?

Thanks.

[highfield]

FYI - Zone Labs have just posted an update to version 3.0

[Dudster]

Thanks highfield

Just installed the update and this time chose upgrade instead of clean install. After rebooting, my machine tried to connect to the internet before ZA had finished loading. I thought ok, it must want to send registration data and connected. Then I disconnected and tried to reboot, something was apparently still running so selected cancel instead of end task and then successfully rebooted. Upon loading Windows, it tried to connect again before ZA had loaded .

To cut a long story short, the only way I could stop this was to uninstall ZA (back upto 92% resources free briefly) before installing it again and selecting clean install this time even though I'd uninstalled it After rebooting, it wanted to connect again, I did, waited a bit before disconnecting and trying to reboot, something still running so I selected cancel again and rebooted expecting it to try and connect again on loading Windows. Hurrah, it stopped and now I have 83% resources free instead of 80%. Smileys on these forums are still no longer animated on my machine though.

Thanks for the heads up highfield.

Wow Dudster, I think ZA just doesn't like you

I downloaded and installed it on 3 machines this morning: 2 Win98 boxes which I did an "upgrade" and one WinXP that was a new build. Each went smoothly for me.


Re: the lack of animated smiles, Check your ZoneAlarm settings under Privacy>Ad Blocking>Custom to see if you're blocking animations.

[Dudster]

Heheh, me and 2.6 got along great but me n 3.0 keep having arguments, maybe coz I looked down on it when I first met it

I was surprised when it wanted to connect as no other version of ZA has ever tried to connect on me but then I never get emails from ZoneLabs so I thought the registration was actually working this time (assuming that's what it was doing).

With animated ad blocking on on mine, it blocks most animated ads, freezes avatars and smileys here. With it off (what I'm using), most animated ads get through (but some still seem to be blocked), avatars animate and smileys are still frozen. It doesn't happen on the other machine I installed it on (both IE6) but that one blocks fewer animated ads with blocking on. It's not really a problem though (all the important stuff works) so I'll just hope it suddenly fixes itself one day. I had a quick look at the Quake3World forums and everything there was still animated though I think it uses that other major forum software as opposed to vBulletin (if that's got anything to do with it).

Edit - just checked at xtremepccentral and the smileys do animate for me there

[highfield]

Dudster your resource problem sounds like you must be using ME. If that's the case then upgrade to 2000 or XP - or even downgrade to 98SE, and maybe your apps (ZA included) won't be so hungry.

[Dudster]

Heheh, wouldn't touch ME with a barge pole. I'm still running 98SE here. Plan on getting XP later this year, or maybe even next year. It all looks so complex, I don't even know if my normal format n install will work with XP etc. etc. I'll stick with good old 98SE till it starts getting truely out of date/causing me real grief.

ZAP 3.0 is the only app I have that is this resource hungry. ZAP 2.6 used 2% of my resources, 3.0 is using 9% and the first version of 3.0 was using 12%. PC-cillin (not installed at the mo) uses 2% and that has the main program aswell as POP3 and web scanning.

It's not really a problem that my resources are kinda low (I haven't come across any problems due to low resources) as I don't run much simultaneously and reboot often. I'm just in the habit of having like 90% free (or more) on bootup. I think some people who are teetering on the edge of having resource issues may have a bad time with ZAP 3.0 though.