Hardware Insights Forum

I tried to install ZoneAlarm Firewall(free edition) on my XP laptop. Unfortunately, it was never meant to be...

First off, my computer took about 5 minutes to boot up. I was like whatever, then I tried to open a program, nothing happened. So I was like this is stupid, and I opened the ZoneAlarm interface. That didn't go well either, I got a "ZoneAlarm detected system instability" message. Then explorer.exe crashed, and didn't come back. I restarted the computer. It booted up normally, but then it started going crazy. Lot of the core processes of Windows crashed, and the System Shutdown in 1 minute thing came up. Apparently svchost.exe crashed. Then I had enough and I rebooted into safe mode and uninstalled ZoneAlarm.

And now my computer works fine again.

The moral of the story: DO NOT USE THIS CRAP!

ouch. I used to use zonealarm several years ago. It did pop up a lot of alerts, but it was actually quite effective other than that, and it didn't cause any windows problems. It looks like it has gone downhill quite a bit.

Yeah and the interface looks totally Windows 98ish LOL

If that happens then it had problems working with another program. What antivirus are you using?

Comodo Anti-Virus.

shovenose wrote:Comodo Anti-Virus.

I think you got it the wrong way around when they said Comodo is a excellent program. Its firewall is top notch its av sucks big time. Use Comodo firewall coz it got HIPS with another Av like Avast home edition or MSE.

It's good software, I'm guessing there was a problem with your PC, and it's specifications rather than the software. You should give it another go, contact ZoneAlarm with some screenshots and a detailed report and they'll happily assist you.

I reviewed Comodo Anti Virus. Trust me I know if it's good or not. It throws up a lot of false positives, but I trust it a lot more than MSE.
Now stop telling me it's my fault.

Yes I can be a stubborn @$$hole

shovenose wrote:I reviewed Comodo Anti Virus. Trust me I know if it's good or not. It throws up a lot of false positives, but I trust it a lot more than MSE.
Now stop telling me it's my fault.

Yes I can be a stubborn @$$hole

I would rather get 1,000 Trojans than use MSE. If a friend came round and saw that I was running MSE, I would want to shoot myself. I don't run any software that Microsoft have created, except a stripped down version of Windows, and I mean stripped down. No media player, notepad, wordpad, paint, internet explorer, nothing - all the applications are from companies other than MS.

Microsoft Security Essentials is good!

Look here I have reviewed a lot of Anti Virus software:
http://hardwareinsights.com/category ... e-reviews/