SillyDog701 Message Centre

[Edward]

The new version of ZoneAlarm (5.0.590.015) disables the e-mail scanning in Norton AntiVirus under Windows.

Uninstalling this version, and reinstalling the previous version, remedied this issue on my PC.

Others on Zone Labs' forums, are also reporting various issues with the above version.

UserAgent: Opera/7.50 (Windows NT 5.1; U) [en]

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SillyDog701 Moderator
User of ubuntu.

[profman]

[Edward]

I do not know, but I uninstalled it and reinstalled the previous version (4.5) which did not cause the Norton problem.

However, since starting the thread, I read on their support forums about other problems people are having with ZA 5, some also involving Norton. So I'm sticking with 4.5 for now. My only other options are to use the built-in firewall with XP, or buy a router and use that as a hardware-based firewall.

UserAgent: Opera/7.50 (X11; Linux i586; U) [en]

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SillyDog701 Moderator
User of ubuntu.

[Fulvio]

http://www.computercops.biz/postitle5563-0-0-.html
This is the only credible report. I have seen other reports, but very likely they are encountering the same problems which are offered by Norton.
Now ZA Pro has Antivirus of some kind, and if anyone has ever attempted to even have two Antivirus programs, one of which is desabled, the reasons for the problems are obvious.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) (CK-SillyDog)

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"I've got a very poor sense of direction. I keep forgetting which way is forwards."
WinXP, SP3, 512 MB, 3.0.15 regular, 3.5.5 regular and portable , TB2.0.0.23, Flock2.5.2, IE8.0, SM2.0, Google Chrome2.0.x, Zone Alarm; AVG9.0, JRE1.6_17

[Edward]

ZoneLabs Support Forum for installation issues.

It's amazing that after all this time, the errant version continues to be made available for download...

I'm seriously considering spending the money on a wireless router and new wireless network cards...

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040514

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SillyDog701 Moderator
User of ubuntu.

[Jeffredo]

Hello Edward. It is pretty ridiculous that ZoneLabs continues to offer it when there has been so much immediate negative feedback regarding this release. Here's a link to Download.com. Since the May 24th release the have been 144 reviews submitted and it's almost two thirds thumbs down. Many have common themes (crashes, unable to connect to internet, Norton AV troubles).

http://download.com.com/3000-2092-10291276.html?tag=lst-0-2

About three weeks ago I tried Sygate Personal Firewall 5.5 (free edition). I had been using ZoneAlarm 4.5 for about six months with no complaints, but read in the Opera forums that Sygate was lighter on system resources. I installed Sygate on a very old PC and a quite new one. They both experienced about a 10 to 15% increase in browser rendering speeds (I test daily with www.numion.com/Yourspeed/ ). I'm very happy with it.

http://smb.sygate.com/buy/download_buy.htm

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) (CK-SillyDog)

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Jeff

[Edward]

When we were AT&T Broadband, they offered Sygate free to the customers back then. I'll check it out, thanks.

I just tried the bandwidth test you referred to, it crashed Mozilla.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040514

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SillyDog701 Moderator
User of ubuntu.

[Jeffredo]

That's really strange! I just tried the site with Mozilla 1.6 in Knoppix and it worked great (actually quite a bit better score than with Windows XP). Anyway, Sygate is a very good firewall. I got better throughput scores with it than Windows XP's standard firewall! Plus I ran it through a security test site and it passed with flying colors (as did ZoneAlarm).

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040413 Debian/1.6-5

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Jeff

[Mandrake]

Kerio Personal Firewall is a good personal firewall too .

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

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Core i7 920 | ASUS P6T Deluxe v2 | 3TB+ HDD | 12GB Corsair DDR3 | Radeon 4890 Xfire | X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty | Logitech Z-5500 Speakers | Dell 3008WFP | Seven RC1

[Edward]

[Edward]

I reinstalled ZoneAlarm 4.5 (ZA) tonight, as I noticed something odd with Sygate. Apparently, it lets SVCHOST.EXE act as a server, in which case, I discovered Port 1025 was open to connections and also found a couple of systems connected to it this evening. In a DOS window, the command netstat -a displayed the connections.

If SVCHOST.EXE (in XP) is not allowed to connect to the Internet at first, you will not be able to connect to it at all.

Upon reinstalling ZA, I let SVCHOST access the internet, but after a couple of minutes ZA displayed a window asking whether or not to let SVCHOST act as a server, I checked the box to remember the answer, and clicked NO. Upon typing netstat -a after this, it did not display any outside connections to Port 1025.

I ran Sygate from this past Sunday through this evening, and assuming systems had connected to Port 1025 all week, in doing a virus scan with Norton, it did not detect any trojans or viruses. In fact, to be sure Norton was working, I tested it against the EICAR test file tonight (information on it is at the EICAR home page), Norton detected it immediately upon download, and deleted it.

UserAgent: Opera/7.51 (Windows NT 5.1; U) [en]

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SillyDog701 Moderator
User of ubuntu.

[Jeffredo]

Hello Edward. I used a port scan tool on a website to test Sygate.

http://grc.com/x/ne.dll?rh1dkyd2

I discovered port 1026 used by SVCHOST.EXE open. I went into the applications manager for Sygate and unchecked (disallowed) SVCHOST.EXE. Upon running the test again the port was closed. I rebooted, connected to the internet (PPPoE ADSL), ran the test again and port 1026 is still closed. I'm able to access the internet with the same bandwidth as before, so I'm not sure what difficulty you may have been having with Sygate and accessing the internet after denying access to SVCHOST.EXE .

Seems like they key to either firewall is to "just say no" to SVCHOST.EXE!

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8

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Jeff

[Edward]

Just to be sure, I ran Norton last night, after reinstalling ZoneAlarm 4.5, which closed port 1025, and Norton did not detect anything amiss.

Port 1025 is listed as "network blackjack" on some sites, including GRC, but others have it for different things.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040514

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SillyDog701 Moderator
User of ubuntu.

[Jeffredo]

I forgot to say thanks for the "heads-up" regarding SVCHOST.EXE and open ports. I had no idea when I said "yes" in Sygate to what I thought was a necessary Windows application it would leave one of my PC's ports open! I'm really glad you checked up on it!

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) (CK-SillyDog)

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Jeff

[Edward]

Glad to be able to help out.

Although this is unrelated to the topic, I also noticed another quirk with XP. While unchecking the items for UPnP, I also noticed Windows Messenger was checked. Since I do not use that, I unchecked it at the same time, which should have caused it NOT to load at startup each time afterwards. All it appeared to have done is remove the Messenger icon from the systray next to the clock, as ZoneAlarm afterwards displayed a box indicating that Messenger wanted to access the internet, even after I removed it from the services.

Incredible!

I am officially classifying Messenger as evil.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040514

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SillyDog701 Moderator
User of ubuntu.