Help needed with Zone Alarm upgrade

[JohnE]

A couple of weeks ago I upgraded my copy of Zone Alarm to the latest version (3.1.395). Since the upgrade my PC is now regularly accessing the internet (i.e. dialling up) without my permission. This starts to happen as soon as I boot my PC and if I try to cancel a dial up, the thing just waits for about 20 seconds, then tries again. This can go on for hours until eventually I'm forced into submission and I have to let it continue.

I have tried scanning for viruses (there aren't any) and I've carried out numerous other tests. I'm 100% confident that the Zone Alarm "upgrade" is responsible for the problem. I emailed Zone Labs (twice) but got no reply. Does anyone else know anything about this problem? Also, is it safe to ditch the upgrade and go back to the previous version? Many thanks.

Sounds to me like a setting on your dial-up network got changed and widnows is trying to establish a dial up connection. I really don't thing it's Zone-Alarm. What version of Windows are you using? Depending on how your internet setting are setup it will try to connect on boot-up and will continue to try till it does, or you change the settings.

[JohnE]

Let me explain why I think this is Zone Alarm. After it first happened (immediately after the upgrade) I checked my Zone Alarm settings and the option to "check for product updates" was set to Automatic (I had previously set this to Manual) so I know that Zone Alarm changed at least one of my settings without my consent. I changed it back to Manual but that didn't solve the problem. Following that I changed the settings for all my listed programs (in the ZA Control Center) so that each app was required to ask my permission before being allowed to connect. That didn't fix it either. My computer still dials out on every boot up. I then visited the Microsoft Knowledge Base and found an article about unauthorised auto-dials. I implemented all the Knowledge Base recommendations - but it still kept happening!

The Knowledge Base article suggested 2 x viruses which can be responsible for this problem - so I did a complete virus scan using Norton but nothing was detected. I then discovered that if I remove Zone Alarm from my Startup group (not a good idea, I know) the problem goes away. If I then start ZA manually the problem immediately reappears as soon as ZA is restarted. I'm also suspicious of Zone Lab's lack of response to my emails. If I find any solution, I'll post it here but for the meantime I'm just wondering about going back to my old version. I know from past experience that it's rarely a good idea to revert to a previous program version after an upgrade.

Sorry - to answer your question, I'm running Windows XP Home Edition.

you looked in start menu > programs > startup and start > run > msconfig > startup for anything in there which would access the internet

also try taking out the phone line, rebooting and seeing what (if any program except windows dialer) moans about not being able to connect to the itnernet

wait....

why cant you just set the auto update to disabled?

[JohnE]

If only life were that simple....

In fact, I'd tried most of the suggestions with varying degrees of success. When I disconnected the phone line, I received an error message saying Unable to connect to Business Serve (that's my ISP) but whichever app was attempting to connect, it didn't identify itself. There's now been a result of sorts, in the form of an admission from Zone Labs. This occurred after I took RogueProtokol's tip and invoked MSCONFIG.

All in all, I spent about 6 hours in MSCONFIG, painstakingly enabling and disabling various options until I eventually tracked the problem down. It seems that there's a conflict between the new Zone Alarm and some of the settings in my 'Services' tab. Basically, I had to disable anything to do with networking, which was okay, because I don't have a networked system anyway - and, on top of that, I had to disable the 'Error Reporting' service and the system 'Event Log'. Having flagged this up to Zone Labs I've received an email from them saying that this is a known issue and will be fixed in the next version. I only wish they'd have come clean a bit sooner. It could have saved me hours of aggravation.

My instincts are to uninstall ZA and go back to the previous version - but I've read too many horror stories from people who tried to uninstall Zone Alarm. I'm going to continue with some of my services disabled and wait for the next version. It can't come soon enough!

Thanks to all for the various suggestions though.

Originally Posted by JohnE

A couple of weeks ago I upgraded my copy of Zone Alarm to the latest version (3.1.395). Since the upgrade my PC is now regularly accessing the internet (i.e. dialling up) without my permission. This starts to happen as soon as I boot my PC and if I try to cancel a dial up, the thing just waits for about 20 seconds, then tries again. This can go on for hours until eventually I'm forced into submission and I have to let it continue.

I have tried scanning for viruses (there aren't any) and I've carried out numerous other tests. I'm 100% confident that the Zone Alarm "upgrade" is responsible for the problem. I emailed Zone Labs (twice) but got no reply. Does anyone else know anything about this problem? Also, is it safe to ditch the upgrade and go back to the previous version? Many thanks.

Go to DUN settings, turn off the auto connect and browsers should not be ticked on your options of browsers (auto-connect when you launch the browser).

[JohnE]

Here's an addendum to the above. I disabled those options using MSCONFIG, which initially seemed to fix the problem. Not for long, however. Within a few days I've been plagued with all kinds of weird problems, from not having a 'modem' icon in my system tray any more to having my system continually try to boot itself up into Safe mode. Today, the most serious problem occurred. As soon as I try to access the web, a driver called SVCHOST.EXE crashes, bringing down my whole machine.

I've now uninstalled the Zone Alarm upgrade and gone back to the previous version. For the moment, all is sweetness and light. Here's hoping it stays that way!!