I'm having a problem with my computer when it is first booted up. It gets to the desktop quickly and loads the programs and all that just fine, but when I click on firefox to get to the internet (DSL) my computer,I guess, locks up for a good 3-5 minutes. I just get a blank white page inside of firefox for a little while and then after the 3-5 minutes my homepage comes up and everything works fine. I'm wondering if Zone Alarm Pro is causing this lockup, because I had this same thing happen on the computer I had before this one but not on my laptop that I use which doesn't have zone alarm on it. Should I get rid of Zone alarm pro and use something else?
Zone Alarm Pro Firewall?
- Thread starter Magnum X
- Start date
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2007
- Messages
- 175
If I were in your shoes, I would disable Zone Alarm Pro. Slows your system down. Having a router/hub/modem are good enough to where you don't even need anti-virus. They are their own hardware firewalls; if a virus does attempt to attack your computer, it gets stopped at the hardware firewall. For you I recommend AVG, it's free, doesn't slow down your computer and here's the place to get it http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1 Hope this helps! If not get back with me.
- Joined
- May 14, 2007
- Messages
- 549
no. modems don't have firewalls built into them only routers do. not to mention anyway an antivirus program is going to catch way more than a hardware firewall will ever hope to catch. AVG is a good free one as is Avast. Kaspersky is the best money can buy tho.
G
GreenMonkey
Wow spann - your post is as factually inaccurate as my 6 pack abs. The only difference is that when I tell people in a chatroom or forum that I have six pack abs nobody can prove that I dont. Where as.....
A modem of any kind, be it dial up or cable or dsl, simpy converts a signal that your processor cannot understand into a signal that it can. DSL forexample uses carrier frequency's over your existing telephone frequency's. This overlap of different signal occurs at two different speed so if you were to sample the signal at a slow speed you get telephone voice - but if you sample the signal at high speeds and decouple it with the first signal then the remaining signal is your data signal.
By itself a computer cannot seperate the signals appropriately so a cable modem / dsl modem is used to clean off the unwanted voice or tv communication and leave the data part. This in no way what so ever looks at the data being sent, blocks any ports, or viruses.
A Hub on the other hand, (also known as a repeater, or splitter) will take a signal and send that same exact signal to each and every device using the hub. The devices are resonsible to know if the signal sent is for them or someone else and hubs (which only check the input line, and copy it directly to many output lines) also in now way what so ever have a firewall.
A Switch, (or a smart hub) acts like a hub but keeps a table of senders and recievers. When a signal is sent to a switch only the device that the data was meant for gets sent the signal. This reduces the number of data collisions, which is when multiple devices are trying to send but errors occure because only one can send at a time. Hubs have many collisions. Switches have few collisions and allow multiple devices to send at the same time. Switches - although smart hubs - are dumb routers, and also have no built in firewall.
A router, on the other hand, is a smart switch. Not only does it seperate senders and recievers, match them up and allow them to communicate simultaneousely (depending on who the reciever is) but routers also keep track of IP addresses. Switches and hubs dont know anything about IP addresses. A router may act as a DHCP server and allocate IP addresses, or act as a gateway. Routers themselves have an IP and any data that wants to leave the network must first send its data through the router. Most routers have built in firewalls (all home routers do). A router will actually look at the signal being sent, sender and reciever, and it will also perform port forwarding / blocking.
A firewall is a piece of hardware or software which prevents access to a computer on a network on a designated port. One computer, over one internet (also known to the media as a serries of tubes) has a serries of ports for which each program has its own port (in most cases). Right now, your web browser is using port 80 (HTTP) to communicate with the webhost server. A firewall can block some or all ports to a givven computer, and often all internet access in both directions. This however, does not prevent a computer from getting a virus.
The least common way to get a virus as a home user is for a virus to spam itself to other random ip addresses over many ports looking for an open port that it happens to know hwo to exploit in such as way as to download itself without your permission and infect your computer. Most of the time, the things that do this are hackers, and trojans, not viruses.
It is severely more common to get a virus from visiting the wrong website, downloading the wrong file, installing the wrong program, opening the wrong email, or trusting the wrong person. All of these methods of getting a virus will get past a firewall because you as a user give permission for programs to access the internet - such as games, firefox, and your favorite file downloading program. By allowing this you are saying "dear firewall, i want to be able to use the internet otherwise i wouldnt be paying $50 a month for it. Please block every thing that I dont actually use." At this point things which you do use, will have nothing preventing a viruses to enter through their port (unless you have antivirus duh).
While I come to an end, incase you are wondering a worm, virus, and trojan are all different. Trojans dont coppy themselves and traditionally dont harm your system, they just lower your safety settings so that worse things can get in. They are also usually the one who know how to take advantage of loopholes and exploits, using them to upload a virus.
Next of all, your statement of 'avg doesnt slow your computer down' case and point
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6600_7-6655968-1.html
You can clearly see that AVG was hands down the AV which affected the computer system the MOST, causing it to be incredibly slower than even Norton (which everyone hates). Myself, I try to be as bypartisan as possible and i make judgments based upon fact and give things equal chance. too bad Norton haters never will
AVG used to be awsome, it was unintrusive, and well equiped to handle threats. But lately it has been more intrusive than any other anti virus out there and according to antivirus comparatives .org, it has lessened in its AV effectiveness.
But hey you are right about one thing which I cannot dispute: AVG does come in a free version. Congradulations.
This is another case of people talkign about things they dont know about. Let me stress that I do not in any way hate or hold any ill will towards people who dont know the answer to things, or dont knwo how things work. But I do dislike it when they go arround pretending they do.
No, offence, but understanding that a firewall is different than antivirus isnt that extremely difficult, but if you want up for round two we could always get talking more about IEEE 802.3 standard. I only bring it up since it is related to this topic.
IEEE 802.3 is also known as ethernet.
EDIT:
Related links:
----------------
http://www.av-comparatives.org/
http://edgegamers.us/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?138021
http://edgegamers.us/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?124998.0#post_125604
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6600_7-6655968-1.html
A modem of any kind, be it dial up or cable or dsl, simpy converts a signal that your processor cannot understand into a signal that it can. DSL forexample uses carrier frequency's over your existing telephone frequency's. This overlap of different signal occurs at two different speed so if you were to sample the signal at a slow speed you get telephone voice - but if you sample the signal at high speeds and decouple it with the first signal then the remaining signal is your data signal.
By itself a computer cannot seperate the signals appropriately so a cable modem / dsl modem is used to clean off the unwanted voice or tv communication and leave the data part. This in no way what so ever looks at the data being sent, blocks any ports, or viruses.
A Hub on the other hand, (also known as a repeater, or splitter) will take a signal and send that same exact signal to each and every device using the hub. The devices are resonsible to know if the signal sent is for them or someone else and hubs (which only check the input line, and copy it directly to many output lines) also in now way what so ever have a firewall.
A Switch, (or a smart hub) acts like a hub but keeps a table of senders and recievers. When a signal is sent to a switch only the device that the data was meant for gets sent the signal. This reduces the number of data collisions, which is when multiple devices are trying to send but errors occure because only one can send at a time. Hubs have many collisions. Switches have few collisions and allow multiple devices to send at the same time. Switches - although smart hubs - are dumb routers, and also have no built in firewall.
A router, on the other hand, is a smart switch. Not only does it seperate senders and recievers, match them up and allow them to communicate simultaneousely (depending on who the reciever is) but routers also keep track of IP addresses. Switches and hubs dont know anything about IP addresses. A router may act as a DHCP server and allocate IP addresses, or act as a gateway. Routers themselves have an IP and any data that wants to leave the network must first send its data through the router. Most routers have built in firewalls (all home routers do). A router will actually look at the signal being sent, sender and reciever, and it will also perform port forwarding / blocking.
A firewall is a piece of hardware or software which prevents access to a computer on a network on a designated port. One computer, over one internet (also known to the media as a serries of tubes) has a serries of ports for which each program has its own port (in most cases). Right now, your web browser is using port 80 (HTTP) to communicate with the webhost server. A firewall can block some or all ports to a givven computer, and often all internet access in both directions. This however, does not prevent a computer from getting a virus.
The least common way to get a virus as a home user is for a virus to spam itself to other random ip addresses over many ports looking for an open port that it happens to know hwo to exploit in such as way as to download itself without your permission and infect your computer. Most of the time, the things that do this are hackers, and trojans, not viruses.
It is severely more common to get a virus from visiting the wrong website, downloading the wrong file, installing the wrong program, opening the wrong email, or trusting the wrong person. All of these methods of getting a virus will get past a firewall because you as a user give permission for programs to access the internet - such as games, firefox, and your favorite file downloading program. By allowing this you are saying "dear firewall, i want to be able to use the internet otherwise i wouldnt be paying $50 a month for it. Please block every thing that I dont actually use." At this point things which you do use, will have nothing preventing a viruses to enter through their port (unless you have antivirus duh).
While I come to an end, incase you are wondering a worm, virus, and trojan are all different. Trojans dont coppy themselves and traditionally dont harm your system, they just lower your safety settings so that worse things can get in. They are also usually the one who know how to take advantage of loopholes and exploits, using them to upload a virus.
Next of all, your statement of 'avg doesnt slow your computer down' case and point
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6600_7-6655968-1.html
You can clearly see that AVG was hands down the AV which affected the computer system the MOST, causing it to be incredibly slower than even Norton (which everyone hates). Myself, I try to be as bypartisan as possible and i make judgments based upon fact and give things equal chance. too bad Norton haters never will
AVG used to be awsome, it was unintrusive, and well equiped to handle threats. But lately it has been more intrusive than any other anti virus out there and according to antivirus comparatives .org, it has lessened in its AV effectiveness.
But hey you are right about one thing which I cannot dispute: AVG does come in a free version. Congradulations.
This is another case of people talkign about things they dont know about. Let me stress that I do not in any way hate or hold any ill will towards people who dont know the answer to things, or dont knwo how things work. But I do dislike it when they go arround pretending they do.
No, offence, but understanding that a firewall is different than antivirus isnt that extremely difficult, but if you want up for round two we could always get talking more about IEEE 802.3 standard. I only bring it up since it is related to this topic.
IEEE 802.3 is also known as ethernet.
EDIT:
Related links:
----------------
http://www.av-comparatives.org/
http://edgegamers.us/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?138021
http://edgegamers.us/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?124998.0#post_125604
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6600_7-6655968-1.html
G
GreenMonkey
Oh, and magnum - can you please specify if it is firefox that gets frozen for 5 minutes or if your entire computer will freeze for 5 minutes. I suspect that your computer is not frozen just firefox. Try opening another program (or even wiggling your mouse) while this is happening. Better yet, open the task manager using your good ole friend ctrl alt del and look at the performance tab and see how much of your processor is being used. then look at the 'processes' tab and see which program is using it all.
If it turns out that it is firefox, you might try downloadint he latest version from mozilla.com or mozilla.org (sometimes the internal update doesnt work right and says there are no updates) but uninstalling it and reinstalling it may have a good chance of fixing it.
Also, does this happen with IE or Opera web browsers? have you tried (temporarely) turning off or uninstalling zone alarm to see if this is infact the cause? Let us know and someone can help ya out.
If it turns out that it is firefox, you might try downloadint he latest version from mozilla.com or mozilla.org (sometimes the internal update doesnt work right and says there are no updates) but uninstalling it and reinstalling it may have a good chance of fixing it.
Also, does this happen with IE or Opera web browsers? have you tried (temporarely) turning off or uninstalling zone alarm to see if this is infact the cause? Let us know and someone can help ya out.
Its not just firefox that freezes up, I'm sure its the whole computer. I can open up firefox but I just get the blank white page like I said for a few minutes, I can click the Start button but don't get the start menu to come up, if I try to open steam or xfire during this time they won't open until 3-5minutes later. I can't check the task manager right now until the weekend since I am at college. Like I said this exact same thing happened on my old computer with Zone Alarm Pro on it, but not on my laptop which doesn't have ZA pro on it (I use Norton AV 2007 + Internet Security 2007 on it). I haven't tried turning it off or uninstalling it yet though.
Are there any other firewalls I can use that are free?
P.S. GreenMonkey for all time super geek award
Are there any other firewalls I can use that are free?
P.S. GreenMonkey for all time super geek award
- Joined
- Jul 9, 2007
- Messages
- 601
I had a simular problem when I had Black Ice firewall
It would freeze my entire cpu when I tried to Open internet or a p2p program.
after doing reserch I found that there were a ton of reconfig. files that must be changed and redownloading of programs and sevral files not compatible. I treid for awhile but then got frustrated. Several people in one of my Tech clubs live and die by Black ice but I dont have the time to doo all that is needed.
although some people had very good luck and just changed a couple of things to make it work.
You may be in the same boat I was in.
I now use system suits 7 and I have no problems. In fact it is very easy and now my cpu runs very fast.
But i know people that system suit 7 is not compatible with their system.
I know I am not giving you a solution but It might save you some frustration
It would freeze my entire cpu when I tried to Open internet or a p2p program.
after doing reserch I found that there were a ton of reconfig. files that must be changed and redownloading of programs and sevral files not compatible. I treid for awhile but then got frustrated. Several people in one of my Tech clubs live and die by Black ice but I dont have the time to doo all that is needed.
although some people had very good luck and just changed a couple of things to make it work.
You may be in the same boat I was in.
I now use system suits 7 and I have no problems. In fact it is very easy and now my cpu runs very fast.
But i know people that system suit 7 is not compatible with their system.
I know I am not giving you a solution but It might save you some frustration
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2007
- Messages
- 40
hrm monkey is right about norton symantec in general is good antivirus i myself use symantec corp good stuff unobtrusive and works well nod32 and bitdefender arnt bad either as far as zone alarms concerned it can mess with your machine a bit if your not careful how you can configure it i ran it on the last install of my OS prior to the one im on now and had quite a few issues with it till i got used to it
G
GreenMonkey
Well, ::gulp:: windows firewall is free, and it is guaranteed the easiest the use. It does not however, allow you to do some of the advanced stuff that "real" firewalls might, but as far as I am concearned it does its purpose and is the right choice for most non paranoid users. After XP service poack 2, windows firewall is decent, before then well, i might have turned it off and gotten something else.
I am thinking that there is a small possability that firefix may also have a setting set wrong,.. it is possible that upon start up it is searching for a proxy server. However, this is unlickly as you said your wrong computer is frozen. Or, slow.
Technically, a 'frozen' computer wont even let you move your mouse,... it basically means that windows is not correctly context switching between running prgrams (including itself). It sounds like firefox or zone alarm might be using 100% of your processor on startup, or that zone alarm is blocking internet access to firefox but forgetting to prompt you.
I used to use zone alarm about 7 years ago. I liked it and it was necessary at the time. I do remember that there were 1 or two updated versions that didnt work right - so what i am trying to say is that zone alarm has a history of having issues. It might be possible to search for an older version of zone alarm free someplace. I am still interested in what your computer is doing in the task manager durring this frozen period of time, and i also wonder if you have opened your firewall settings and explicitly told zone alarm (and made sure in the settings that it remembered) that firefox is ok to do what it wants.
I am thinking that there is a small possability that firefix may also have a setting set wrong,.. it is possible that upon start up it is searching for a proxy server. However, this is unlickly as you said your wrong computer is frozen. Or, slow.
Technically, a 'frozen' computer wont even let you move your mouse,... it basically means that windows is not correctly context switching between running prgrams (including itself). It sounds like firefox or zone alarm might be using 100% of your processor on startup, or that zone alarm is blocking internet access to firefox but forgetting to prompt you.
I used to use zone alarm about 7 years ago. I liked it and it was necessary at the time. I do remember that there were 1 or two updated versions that didnt work right - so what i am trying to say is that zone alarm has a history of having issues. It might be possible to search for an older version of zone alarm free someplace. I am still interested in what your computer is doing in the task manager durring this frozen period of time, and i also wonder if you have opened your firewall settings and explicitly told zone alarm (and made sure in the settings that it remembered) that firefox is ok to do what it wants.
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2007
- Messages
- 40
i usually have one installed cause i slave alot of HDD's from customers machines for backups and stuff and when doing data recovery bad partitions etc so i kinda keep alot of security on my machine but i concur with monkey unless there is a need i would stick with windows firewall and a decent router should work for most unless you open emails you shouldnt or are dling a bunch of files of P2P like limewire or as i call it the bot filled wasteland XD
[quote1196270229=GreenMonkey]
I am still interested in what your computer is doing in the task manager durring this frozen period of time, and i also wonder if you have opened your firewall settings and explicitly told zone alarm (and made sure in the settings that it remembered) that firefox is ok to do what it wants.
[/quote1196270229]
I'll have to check out the task manager when I get back home friday
as for firefox, I'm 99% sure it is allowed to do what it wants
I am still interested in what your computer is doing in the task manager durring this frozen period of time, and i also wonder if you have opened your firewall settings and explicitly told zone alarm (and made sure in the settings that it remembered) that firefox is ok to do what it wants.
[/quote1196270229]
I'll have to check out the task manager when I get back home friday
as for firefox, I'm 99% sure it is allowed to do what it wants
ok heres what the task manager shows after I first get to the desktop after my computer is booted up:
It remained like this for a good 3 minutes. After vsmon.exe went down to 00 after the 3 minutes, I opened up firefox and it loaded up just fine.
I checked vsmon.exe on google and I found on http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/vsmon/ that it says:
"vsmon.exe is a process associated with the ZoneAlarm firewall. It is used to monitor Internet traffic and generate alerts depending on the security rules configured by the user. "
It remained like this for a good 3 minutes. After vsmon.exe went down to 00 after the 3 minutes, I opened up firefox and it loaded up just fine.
I checked vsmon.exe on google and I found on http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/vsmon/ that it says:
"vsmon.exe is a process associated with the ZoneAlarm firewall. It is used to monitor Internet traffic and generate alerts depending on the security rules configured by the user. "
G
GreenMonkey
My quick google search has indicated that Zome Alarm Pro is currently having a memory leak issue with one of its versions - you may want to upgrade or downgrade to a different version or just use somehting else. http://forum.zonelabs.org/zonelabs/board/message?board.id=gen&message.id=23016#M23016
Ok. Well I unchecked the 'Load on Startup' box inside of ZoneAlarm Pro and rebooted. Within 30 seconds my desktop was up, everything loaded, I opened firefox and was on my homepage. No lockups at all. So I think I will completely uninstall ZA Pro following what it says here later today:
http://www.nohold.net/noHoldCust25/Prod_1/Articles55646/CompleteUninstallNonNT.html
edit: I noticed that there was a newer version or za pro and the first thing it said was:
"ZoneAlarm Pro version 7.0.462.000
* Performance improvements:
o Improved system boot time"
So I installed that (guess the automatic update checker doesn't work in za pro) and rebooted. Start up time was ok, like 45 seconds - 1 minute or so. No lock ups like before at least. Guess I'll keep using it for now... lol
:|
http://www.nohold.net/noHoldCust25/Prod_1/Articles55646/CompleteUninstallNonNT.html
edit: I noticed that there was a newer version or za pro and the first thing it said was:
"ZoneAlarm Pro version 7.0.462.000
* Performance improvements:
o Improved system boot time"
So I installed that (guess the automatic update checker doesn't work in za pro) and rebooted. Start up time was ok, like 45 seconds - 1 minute or so. No lock ups like before at least. Guess I'll keep using it for now... lol
:|
