Free Zone Alarm: - "VSMON caused an invalid page fault in module vsmon.exe at ...

Hi. Some of you might have come across this problem before. This pertains only to the FREE version of Zone Alarm.

Does anyone know of a workaround (or indeed a cure) for the Zone Alarm problem in Windows 98 SE which occurs at shutdown or restart:

“VSMON caused an invalid page fault in module VSMON.EXE at 0167:00417e75 Registers:" etc, etc.

Using the Win98 help pages I discovered that the problem is entirely caused by Zone Alarm. It only began when I updated my FREE version of Zone Alarm. I considered that there might be some form of conflict caused by installing the update over an existing copy of the free Zone Alarm, so I uninstalled it a couple of days ago. I’ve just installed the latest version of the free Zone Alarm and the problem has returned.

Any thoughts, - anyone?

 

Yes!

1. Boot to safe mode, go to add/remove and uninstall ZoneAlarm.

2. Browse to c:\Program Files and remove any ZoneAlarm folder.

3. Start-Find Zone*.* del everything related to zonealarm.

4. Start-Find vsmon*.* same thing here.

5. Clean all temps etc.

6 reboot back to full mode and install zone alarm clean!

Mike

 

I hope you have not run into problems if you uninstalled from Safe Mode. I received a How To Uninstall Zone Alarm E-mail from the company that contained a warning and I quote:

WARNING! Do Not run the ZoneAlarm Uninstall program while in Safe Mode. The program may not be able to make the proper registry changes in Safe Mode, thus generating errors after a reboot.

 

Hotspur-Uninstalling ZoneAlarm is somewhat complicated. Here is the official advice from ZA.
http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/support/znalmInstallFAQ.jsp

 

It is best to follow ZA uninstallation page.
And, I am with v.2.6.362 which went bonkers one, and had to uninstall it, but it has been good to me. I have not succeeded in making any of the later versions work.

 

Westside--I still use a ZA 2.6 version, also. However, youi may have seen there is a new baddy out there, called Clientman, that can disable these old versions of ZA. (Supposedly the latest version of ZA is immune.)
SpywareBlaster claims it will stop the version of Clientman found so far. So for the moment I am relying on SB to protect the old ZA!!
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/spywareblaster.html

 

Thanks for all the advice guys, I followed it, successfuly removed Zone Alarm and installed Kerio firewall instead. The computer with the win' 98 OS installed is secondary to my main computer's OS - XP, so I don't use that as often, but I am mindful of needing to use a good firewall. Although I used only the Free version of Zone Alarm that experience was enough to put me off Zone Alarm - which I did consider buying the full version of.

So there you go Zone Alarm! Some people (like me) use free versions for evaluation of products, so it's as well to make certain they function as they should.

Thanks everyone for the advice.