Avast and Zonealarm, except...

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hi all -

I just got the message about Avast not being compatible with Zonealarm, etc, etc…
I clicked “No” and all is well I assume, except for one thing…I don’t have and never have had Zonealarm installed.

Any ideas why I got this message?

-Mark

2

Are you using any other Zone Labs software?
What firewall are you using?
Have you had the computer from new? Was there any software pre-installed?

avast! has obviously detected something it believes is ZA firewall, I’m not sure exactly what it is that is checked

3

No, no other Zone lab software installed, I’ve got the SP2 firewall running and my router stops the basic stuff.

I just finished rebuilding the computer from scratch so everything on it is what I wanted. I don’t believe I installed anything that would have ZoneAlarm bundled with it, especially not something that wouldn’t then tell me.

4

Webshield doesn’t really enjoy Zone Alarm Privacy Controls being on. If your using Zone Alarm Free Edition, just ignore the warning, if your using Pro, just turn off the privacy and cookie controls.

Also note: Use only one firewall for your PC so that you won’t get any conflicts.

5

Um, ok…except that, as my message states…I dont have and never HAVE had Zone stuff installed…yet I still got the message.

6

Arakiel, that’s really interresting. Do yo have a file called vsdatant.sys in your windows\system32\ folder? Can you send it to me together with it’s exported registry key?

Please run this command:
regedit /e c:\services.txt HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\vsdatant

and mail me the services.txt file (if present)
Thanks.

7

Email sent.

I did indeed have this file installed. This is incredibly troubling since it means some other piece of software went and installed this without my knowledge. I don’t have Zone Alarm and yet there are traces of it on my disk…time to crank up spybot.

-Mark

8

If you visited the ZoneAlarm site, and used their online scanner, it probably left an active-x control that was being detected.
As a side note, I use ZoneAlarm FW/AV with Avast Home with no problems.
All ‘On Access’ processes are/ have been running, except for Outlook/Exchange monitor, because I don’t use Outlook Express. No conflicts for the last 4 months, since installing both.

9

I found out what it is. Thanks to lukor I was able to narrow my Google searching to that specific file and found out that vsdatant.sys as well as other Zone Labs files are included in the Cisco VPN Client…or at least the version that I installed for access to my work computer. Avast must be picking up on that.

I can’t decide if i’m annoyed by this or not LOL. It isn’t really spyware per-say, it’s more in the league of bundling a certain 3rd party library with your application. However the fact that it is installing such a significant portion of a 3rd party firewall without so much as a “by your leave” has me a bit annoyed :frowning: