ZoneAlarm 5.0 Causes Severe Hangs and Errors

Contributed by AlexTheBeast

June 26, 2004

Tagged: Windows

The new version of zonealarm has serious bugs in it that frequently causes a system to hang or crash.

As people have grown into XP from previous versions of windows, users have forgotten the world of crashes and hang-ups. Therefore, when people start seeing these returning, it gets a lot of attention.

Recently I purchased a new system and updated to the new version of zone alarm. Immediately I started having severe hangs (refractory to CTRL-ALT-DEL even). I updated my LAN drivers without help. A quick google search showed that the new version of zonealarm was causing the problems.

The problem typically shows up when running high bandwidth programs such as p2p, torrents, or video conference software. Often the network connection goes dead first… and then all programs that access the network lock as well. These processes are unable to be stopped through the task manager. Even CTRL-ALT-DEL frequently does nothing. The only thing one can do is a hard reboot.

This is even admitted in this ZoneAlarm Warning in the forums. This forum post also describes how to roll-back to the 4.5 version. Zone Alarm is my firewall of choice… but people should wait awhile before updating.

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Viewing 6 Comments

Electro 4 years ago 1 point
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I get this same problem as well but I found a way to solve it sometimes...

Downloading a file off kazaa while surfing the net with zone alarm then suddenly nothings going on... well, I have my phone jack extended next to my feet so I unplug it... this means I forced a internet disconnect and done, everything will return to normal...

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Svakanaggur 4 years ago 1 point
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Hi,

I had problems with my XP SP2.
It was running badly and hang a lot, even when I opened Notepad,
my computer froze and the internet connections went down to zero.

I have been looking all over the net for a reason and a solution and when I read this I uninstalled my ZoneLabs (ZoneAlarm) 5.x and everything is running great now.

No Lag, No Hanging, P2P programs running fine......so far :)

Thx for this post

Greetings
Svakanaggur

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oggy_elc@hotmail.com 4 years ago 1 point
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I completely agree with the instability of zonealarm..
on both computers i installed it on, (win xp home sp1)
computers crash and reboot automatically on connection to ANY network settings.
I am now sourcing for a better and more stable firewall.
Any recommendations?

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MickeyMouse 4 years ago 1 point
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<ul <h6>oggy_elc@hotmail.com">id="quote"><h6>oggy_elc@hotmail.com wrote:</h6>I completely agree with the instability of zonealarm..
on both computers i installed it on, (win xp home sp1)
computers crash and reboot automatically on connection to ANY network settings.
I am now sourcing for a better and more stable firewall.
Any recommendations?</ul>
Yeah, just download zone alarm 4.5

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jakee 4 years ago 1 point
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the most interesting thingie is that the same thing occurs in win2k + kerio personal firewall 4

i've been trying to solve that prob with no success.

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Anonomous 4 years ago 1 point
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ZoneAlarm works great now -newer version

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