October 9, 2007, 2:28 AM
ZoneAlarm for Windows Vista? Don’t do it
Posted by Julio Franco. Filed under: windows, software, tips & tricks
On a follow-up to my post yesterday about basic security programs you should be running under Windows XP, ever since I upgraded to Vista I revisited those program choices which for the most part remained the same with the exception of the free ZoneAlarm firewall…
In general, Windows Vista’s security is tighter and services such as Defender are more integrated into the OS. During the first couple of months, AVG’s anti-virus did not like Vista and it was common to find certain programs not working correctly until updates were released, even more so security suites that have to deal more directly with the core of the OS. ZoneLabs makers of the ZoneAlarm firewall took its time until the program was ready for Vista and it wasn’t until recently that it was made available on its free form as well (not part of the paid full suite).
Well, in short the experience I had with the latest build of ZoneAlarm for Vista was horrific. I noticed slowdowns and strange behavior from the OS that simply wasn’t there before. In other words, a far cry from the seamless integration and speed seen with the XP version.
If you come from XP and want to install ZoneAlarm in Vista… just don’t do it.
The good news is that Vista’s built-in firewall has proven sufficient for me so far though it does not feature outbound traffic monitoring. It’s time to look for an alternative full-featured free firewall if you are running Vista.
It does have outbound traffic monitoring, it’s just not enabled by default and not accessible as easily as the traditional interface. It’s in Administrative Tools -> Windows Firewall with Advanced Security.
Slow and not very flexible interface, but it’s there.
ZoneAlarm version:7.1.078.000
TrueVector version:7.1.078.000
Driver version:7.1.078.000
I installed this a few days ago, and so far, so good!
I used AVAST befor, AVG now and they both works as
expected, maybe with AVG on the top.
OS: Vista Ultimate.
(By the way, I am becoming a bit irritated over Vista,
it has obviously been launched to soon!)
Irritated how? Just wondering what kind of problem you are having with Vista and what makes it different from your previous OS.
Installed the zonealarm suite 7.1 just now and well after that my Vista 32bit slowed to a crawl, took minutes to get an email opened from outlook 2007, starting eq2 took a few minutes before i could even see the program, open a command prompt from total commander took roughly 45 seconds
Cpu load was minimal and my memory usage was around 1.3gb with 4gig memory that should not be a problem.
I used zonealarm pro in xp and it worked like a charm but in vista seems far from good at this point, i also use avg and pctools spyware doctor, both seem to work okey.
I used to use ZoneAlarm all the time when i used XP; after i moved to Vista, i had crashes, lockups; i even had to re-activate windows at one point! I just use Vista’s own firewall and Defender now, though i still check with Ad-aware 2007 from time to time and my system runs flawless. Oh and i use Nod32 for my AV.
Thanks for the info on Vista and Zone Alarm. I’ve been trying to install it and it hangs on the install at 12%. It always worked fine with XP but I won’t spend anymore time on this now.
Thanks also for the tip from Mictlantecuhtli, I’ll check into that.
Well i should have read your comments earlier. I was impressed from the great reviews of zonealarm and bought the internet security package. while my XP computers are running fine, my laptop with vista on board is suffering
Zone alarm- vista not a good combination
George
been getting stuck at 12% too… glad to know its not just me…
its %$&*@!! Vista!
@Mictlantecuhtli - thanks for the tip - that will definitely come in handy
peace ~ jdc
I installed ZA for Vista last nigh and noticed the decrease in speed. I also saw the svchost was taking up a lot of CPU power. Turns out Windows Defender was the culprit. Since ZA was installed and WD wanted to take back priority over ZA, WD was taxing the service host. I disabled WD an hour ago and haven’t noticed anything since then.
For more help with figuring out what to do when svchost.exe is consuming all of your CPU, check out http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/11/13/svchostexe-using-100-cpu-resources-in-vista-identify-causing-services/
jdc, I noticed that it would pause at 7% along the way, but after a couple of min, the installation had to disconnect my machine off of the network, then afterwards it continued the installation.