Well dang - AVG throws a baby ruth in the punch bowl so now what?

For several years I've been running ZoneAlarm free firewall and AVG free antivirus for firewall and anti-virus protection, and using Ad-aware and Spybot for spyware chores.

On Tuesday, AVG flagged a trojan that I have since learned was instead a glitch in how it related to Zone Alarm. I wasted two hours on Tuesday evening getting that straightened out -- uninstalled Zone Alarm and AVG in the process and downloaded the free trial of Trend Micro IS suite.

Then, (before I read about the ZA/AVG mix up) I decided, "I'll re-download and re-install Zone Alarm instead of spending the $$ on Trend Micro.

So I got an error message from Vista that Zone Alarm's True Vector driver is not being compatible with Vista. What? It worked two nights ago -- what happened?

I have 30 day free trial of Trend Micro still running on the desktop, and am shopping the retail shelf suites before pulling the trigger on purchasing Trend Micro. It seems less resource intensive than AVG, but I can stand the 3% extra resource usage to save the money.

Next, Trend Micro does something that changes the font appearance in MS Outlook. It makes the fonts smaller. I'm getting older. The reason I have a large monitor is so I don't have to wear my glasses to use the computer!

Geezum -- what is the world coming to? I've had more problems in the last two days than in the previous two years. Is there a tweak in Trend Micro that will make it stop meddling with the font apperances in Outlook?

And not to forget, what internet security suites do you prefer, and why? Any feedback on that question will be appreciated.

Finally, can anyone shed light on the True Vector driver business and Vista Home Premium? I was really happy with the Zone Alarm/AVG match up, but now I can't seem to reinstall Zone Alarm.

Thanks in advance,
Rick

PS: Sorry to be on such a rant. Friday is tomorrow, and I am really looking forward to Saturday...

 

You're going to receive as many opinionated answers as there are posters. Each of us has our own reasons for using the software programs we use: it comes free from our ISP, we've been using it ever since going online, it came bundled with the new computer, it's highly rated by CNET or whatever and so forth. In our case, we use the internet security suite from McAfee. Why? LOL It came bundled with our new computers last summer. It's been fine and neither my wife (she has her own computer) nor I have any complaints. Hey... if it isnt' broken, why bother trying to fix it? Neither of us has any intentions of switching to anything else at this time.

 

LOL... James is right, just like belly buttons... everyone has one (opinion).

Well, I ran into something similar a month or so ago. I too loved the ZA/AVG paring, and used it for years... until ZA decided to not play well with others. In my case, it was keeping me from accessing the Internet - which is beside the point.

I continue to use AVG, but decided to use XPs firewall. I think you should give the Vista one a try before you sink money into one.

 

Try Comodo's highly rated free firewall. http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/

 

Hi Bonk

I agree with Mark.

I have 6 computers on a LAN in my home and office. And try to use different Virus scanner and Firewalls on each in order to eval them for use on my clients workstations of which there are about 700 computers.

This is what I have found. Comodo AntiVirus with Comodo Firewall with ThreatFire as a Kicker is rock solid, easy on the CPU and the most trouble free of all the others. Hardly anything gets by this trio. I have begun putting this combo on those troublesome users that continually want to do all the wrong things.

In any case if you want to keep ZA it will likely need to be completely cleaned before it can be properly re-installed.

Removing and cleaning ZoneAlarm

I would do this in Safe Mode.

Make sure hidden files and folders are shown. Open Windows Explorer. Depending on your OS click Tools or View and then Folder Options > View.

Choose Show hidden files and folders, uncheck Hide protected operating system files and click OK.

Then:

Highlight and copy all text between the lines but not the lines. Note I have not tried this multi file search in Vista's funky search. If it don't work then you will need to search each one individually.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Zonelabs; "zone labs "; "Internet logs "; vsconfig.xml; vsdata.dll; vsdata95.vxd; vsdatant.sys; vsmon.*; vsmonapi.dll; vsnetutils.dll;vspubapi.dll; zaplus.*; zapro.*; zllictbl.dat; zlparser.dll; zonealarm.exe; zoneband.dll; vsutil.dll; zlclient.*
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Next:
Start-Search-Files and Folders. In location set to search your Local Hard Drive (usually C:\ ) or All Local Drives.

Select Advanced Search Options and set to search subfolders and hidden files.

Now paste the copied lines from above into the search box and click Search Now.

Delete all it finds! Empty Recycle bin.


Next:
To remove all ZoneLabs keys left in the Windows registry.

Highlight and copy for pasting, the below (between the lines)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
REGEDIT4
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ZAMailSafe]
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Zone Labs]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Zone Labs]
[-HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Zone Labs]
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Paste the lines into Notepad.
Save as removeza.reg.
Once saved double click it and allow accept the prompts for changes to be made.

Now REBOOT.

If you are paranoid do the following also.

D/L Regseeker http://www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm

Run it and select find in Registry the following 1 at a time.
zonelabs
zone labs
zonealarm
zoneband
zlclient
zaplus
zapro
zamailsafe
zllictbl
zlparser
Internet logs
vsconfig
vsdata
vsmon
vsnetutils
vspubapi
vsutil

Then in Regseeker select Clean Registry and do a general Reg clean before rebooting.

Mike

 

Hi Bonk

I want to thank you for your post as it lead me to look into Vista's search.

They did take something away. You can not enter a search for multiple wildcards as in XP and 2K. Like *.bak;*.tmp;zone*.*.

I never have liked Vista's search anyways!

In any case I found a stand alone (portable) file search that is great.

It is a tiny program.
http://www.easexp.com/xsearch/

So if you have Vista d/l this and paste the group I posted into it to get them all in one swoop.

I don't even know if you are using Vista for sure but one other thing if you are.

At least while doing this ZA cleanup "turn off UAC ".

Mike

 

Thanks to all for the feedback, and in particular to Mark for the referral on the comodo firewall. I "m looking into that.

Mike, if I run jv16 powertools will it get me to the same place in terms of cleaning up left behind Zone Alarm files?

 

Yes and you can paste several entries there and search several at once.

The entries you paste will scroll up so I don't know if they get lost so I would do them 7 at a time. A full search block.

Mike