Thinkpads Forum

I've read about a problem with NOD32 and Zonealarm firewall but does any one else have horror stories of ZA acting up with any other AV software?

I used to use the full Zonealarm Suite but lost confidence in it for several reasons:
1. Buggy (v6.1-v6.5) - too many hangups for my liking durng routine updates.
2. Poor Trojan protection. On several occasions it identified a trojan only to say it could not treat it. Great.
3. Missed several nasty malware apps completely. Most recently I had some malware pop up from a file someone sent me. ZA firewall spotted it and blocked it. So then I found it's location (windows/system) and ran a virus scan and spyware scan using ZA on the entire Windows folder while the malware process was *still running*. Nada. ZoneAlarm found nothing and this was supposed to be my main line of defense. I had to use spybot to remove it. Shocking IMO.

So while the ZA firewall has proved itself (I now have v7 pro running) I'm in need of a new AV app. Any opinions on what plays well with ZA?

I use just the Zone Alarm firewall (free version) and have been running it with Symantic Professional with no problems. I believe ZA will run well with Avast also.

My desktop runs ZA Pro with Kaspersky AV 7 and my T30 runs ZA Pro with AVG 7.5. Neither configuration has caused problems so far.

In your shoes I would hang on to NOD32 and ditch ZA. But uninstalling ZA may prove to be a nightmare, perhaps better to restore an image from prior to the ZA install.

Firewalls do not age as much as the vendors may want you to believe (read missing out on $$$) and there is not that much wrong with the old windows firewall aided by some more up to date HIPS software. You'll have to explore some of the security forums for that, it will be a total eye opener for you.

Peter