The screen said that Zone Alarm upgrade is available. It's version 60.631.003. So I downloaded it. Installed and broke my computer for a bit.
The upgrade includes something very new. I don't recall the name, but the idea is the same as Spybot's teatimer, or PestPatrol. It could even be PestPatrol in disguise. It was a pain to startup, because it treated my mouse and many other things as spies looking at every keystroke - really, that's almost the exact wording of the messages, tons of messages
It is probably a nice upgrade. But I messed up. The screen clearly said to uninstall all spy and spam fighting utilities. I did not. Clicked OK to go on without thinking. BIG mistake.
So I tried system restore to a savepoint done just before this upgrade.
That failed. I tried previous savepoint. That failed as well. Not very useful, is it ?
My final solution was to uninstall the two utilities followed by uninstallation of Zone Alarm because things still didn't work. Well, that was a mess too - ZA couldn't stop because trueVector was running, but I couldn't stop TV because ZA was running. Disable the service, and shut down ZA finally did the trick (counting on the router to protect me in such times
). I guess, looking back, it's an obvious procedure, but I didn't think of any of these complications.I reverted to my original version of ZA, installed it, and thankfully it remembered my license key, but not the settings of which I had many. Then I upgraded to the December version 5.5.062.004 (the last one I had), updated virus stuff and all seems well now. I can even connect here and to google
I'm reluctant to allow this v6 upgrade to come in, as I can't be sure if the problem really was due to me failing to uninstall what I should have. Ideas? Suggestions HOW to do it correctly when ZA reminds me in couple days?