That is the latest beta build you have.
Rick-F (on the zonealarm forum) wrote: "FYI... The 'webshield' of 'a v a s t' is not firewall like. 'Webshield' scans for viruses as the page is downloading. It's just extra protection and works very well with older versions of ZA. I'm still running ZA - 7.0.302.000."
That was me ;D 8)
I was reading this thread with interest and when I saw the link to the discussion of this problem on ZA’s forum and read it – I couldn’t let miss-truth like that pass. I also use ZA… but it’s a bit older (see sig line below).
No… sad news…
I would like to see any acknowledgment from Alwil or Zonelabs that a problem exists…
Just to keep stuff up to date here…
I have been trying a number of things suggested to me on the ZoneLabs forum, including giving trusted server rights to the avast program, and to all browsers, but it doesn’t seem to change the behavior much.
I must say, as much as I like avast, I suspect that the problem is on the avast side. My reason for this is that I notice the following behavior:
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With a clean boot, running ONLY avast and Zonealarm, and no other non-microsoft services, after a period of moderate web surfing, the browser will hang.
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If I terminate the avast web shield, I don’t even have to restart the browser. I can just press the reload button, and everything works fine.
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If I try to re-start the web shield, it won’t fully restart. It will go into a state where it says “The Provider is waiting for a subsystem to start”.
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If, when the browser hangs, instead of terminating Avast, I terminate ZoneAlarm, the problem does not go away until I reboot.
sgolux,
Just curious… did avast version 4.7 work for you with ‘webshield’ activated and ZoneAlarm? I looked back on your earlier posts and couldn’t find any mention of prior version working for you.
I have used ZoneAlarm for years. One year ago I upgraded from XP to Vista. On my XP machine, I was running Norton, and I kept hating it more and more, so when I moved to the Vista machine, I swore not to use that junk any more. That is when I upgraded to Avast. At the same time, zonealarm did not yet work properly on vista. In fact, very few firewalls did for quite some time. So I used a clunky hardware firewall that isn’t very good on my router, and used Avast on my Vista machine, which left me with only the windows firewall when I was traveling, which is not a great feeling. Then, finally, zonealarm came out with a version of their firewall (the current one) that actually works on Vista, after Vista is upgraded to SP1. So I did that upgrade, and that is when I have seen the conflict of webshield with zonealarm.
On my old XP machine, I did have a web scanner that was part of my norton package (I forget exactly what it was called) and that worked with my zonealarm back in those days with no problem.
Rick F & sgolux,
I have not made the switch to Vista (since I see no compelling improvement to do so).
However, I am wondering if your participation in the ZoneAlarm forums gives you any indication that this appears to be a problem restricted to the users of both products under Vista or is it a problem thought to appear also in XP.
I gave up the increasingly problematic ZoneAlarm some time ago in favor of just the good old Windows XP Firewall and my hardware router (a Linux based Linksys product running third party firmware). Before I get any lectures I made the choice deliberately, I had not experienced any virus infection since starting to use avast (4 years ago) that was not deliberately inserted by me and that remains true to this instant.
However, if there is any value at all in me installing and running the latest ZoneAlarm along with the latest version of avast in my Windows XP SP2 system I will be happy to do so (I have sufficient layers of recovery available).
If this is thought to be an issue only for Vista users I will not waste the effort. Please let me know.
As stated above, I have no personal experience of running avast under XP. I also had no problems with zonealarm under XP.
However, if you have a sufficiently powerful firewall running in your router, I see no reason to run zonealarm or any other software firewall on your PC. Of course “sufficiently powerful” is an interesting concept here and must give with your own gut and needs. I like zonealarm because it deals with both incoming packets (also dealt with by the windows firewall on both XP and VISTA) but also filters outgoing packets, which allows one to (possibly) avert the problems of a trojan horse. Some hardware based firewalls can also do this, although (of course) they must do it on a protocol level, rather than a program level, so typically the setup is more complex.
Then there is the issue of whether you travel with your computer. I travel extensively with mine, so I really need something on my computer itself, as I join various and sundry foreign LANs for access to the broader internet.
Hope this helps.
Both XP and Vista offer very good inbound protection. No problems.
XP does not offer outbound. Vista has an ‘advanced’ tool to configure (not very friendly).
I gave up in favor of Comodo and then PCTools (on Vista).
I’m missing this…
I think sgolux referred this comment by igor.
I don’t really participate in the ZA forums. Only posted there the other day to defend avast! (took me 20 minutes to find my password to the forum too :
). So I’m not sure if this problem exists only on Vista with ZA and avast 4.8… or if it’s also a problem with XP as well.
I’ve not made the switch to Vista either… nor do I plan to anytime soon. I just heard too many people having trouble with drivers and other software. I’ve stuck with ZA 7.0.302 on my XP box because that’s the version that has worked for me. Since it’s the ‘free’ version, it has no privacy issues (not offered in the free version of ZA). I had the ‘Pro’ version (or ZAP) a few years ago with a 2-yr license, but when they upgraded to a newer version, it no longer worked on Win98 (the OS I was using back then). I had to fall back to an older version. ZA support never replied to any emails so I went back to the free version after losing 1 yr use of my license.