PCTech Forums

Hi, here's another issue I've been having. Upon completion of boot, I would normally have ZoneAlarm and Norton Auto-Protect in the sys tray. Sometimes, ZoneAlarm will not be there and this is when all hell breaks loose. Executing ZoneAlarm from the All Programs menu does nothing. Opening or trying to turn off Auto-Protect does nothing. CTRL-ALT-Delete doesn't work. msconfig doesn't work. Service.msc doesn't work, either. Most, if not all folders wiill open but what can be done is hit or miss. Finally, I get to hold in the pwr button, restart and hope all is well again. I've had to restart as many as 3 times to get back to normal.

I have a Pavilion 762n: 2.26P4, 768RAM, 64Radeon, wireless/optical mouse, DVD-RW drive. This same problem happens on my laptop. I have all windows updates, AV is up to date and scans are regularly ran, ZoneAlarm on both, SpyBot, Ad-Aware, CWShredder, HJT, and all driver updates (except the DVD-RW, which says device not found when performing a firmware update).

I saw a prior topic somewhat related to my problem but I couldn't tell if it was the same or not. Thanks,

Ronny

Have you just installed SP2?
There are known issues with SP2 and Zone Alarm

if your running sp2 (which im assumning sence you said you have all updates) the best thing you can do until a fix is released, is to turn off ZoneAlarm from the Systray.

I did some research concerning SP2 & ZoneAlarm. I thought the following might be useful to those running ZoneAlarm:


New and improved features in ZoneAlarm version 5.1.011

Added Microsoft Security Center support
Added support for Microsoft SP2
Fixed Internet Explorer browsing issues
Fixed IIS FTP Server issues
Fixed Visual Studio2002/2003 with IIS issues
Fixed AOL Browser issues
Fixed check for update issues (proxy configuration detection)
Fixed issues with checkdisk
Fixed more system stability issues
Routine maintenance items

-------------------------------------------------------------

ZA 5.1.001 has updates specific to SP2, so anyone running an earlier version might want to consider updating ZA before applying SP2.

-------------------------------------------------------------
To update your ZoneAlarm product to the latest version, open your ZoneAlarm product interface, click Overview in the left-hand column, and go to the Preferences tab (upper right corner). Under the "Check for Updates" section, click the button on the right that says Check for Update. A pop-up box will inform you if there is a more current version of your product available.

If your subscription has expired, you have two options to update your ZoneAlarm product:

Visit http://www.zonealarm.com and purchase a new subscription, which will automatically install the most recent version of the product you purchase; or
Open your ZoneAlarm product user interface, click Overview in the left-hand column, and go to the Product Info tab (upper right corner). Under "Support and Update Information," click the Renew button. You will be taken to a web page to renew your subscription.


Cactus

My Zone Alarm runs with SP2 with no problems.... it's the latest version I think ?



I had the previous version too and there was no problem with that either

lilpink x

Thanks for the replies. Maybe I should have explained it better. I'm not actually concerned with ZoneAlarm, it's just the first thing I notice when my pc is acting strange. When I say msconfig/ctrl-alt-del/services don't work, I really mean they don't work. ZoneAlarm problem or not, I should still be able to run those. I am running SP2 but I've had the problem before the install as well. ZoneAlarm 5.1.033.000 Thanks.

Have you tried to open Task Manager in safe mode?
And how about finding msconfig.exe by start->find->files and folders.Doulble click the exe see if it opens.
Sometimes you can't run msconfig from "run" in start menu but you can open it manualy from executing the exe.

Cactus

Good idea, next time it happens I'll try it. Thanks!

are you sure, you haven't got malware? Run this : (i recommend running them all, but specially the housecall, very good !


STINGER http://www.chip.de/downloads/c_downloads_11105456.html
Spybot : http://www.download.com/3000-8022-10122137.html
adaware : http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ online scan for trojans
http://www.ravantivirus.com/scan/