Currently, I've given up on ZA Free... my firewall right now is Sunbelt Kerio (I'm thinking of trying out Comodo's Free Firewall). When I installed the latest version of ZA Free from Zonelabs, my system would take forever to shut down, startup, load the desktop after I log on, etc. All in all ZA Free firewall slowed down my computer to a point where switching back to Windows Firewall or another firewall would be a much better option. Has anyone else experienced these such problems with ZA's Free Firewall?


PS: Older versions of ZA Free did fine with my computer, but the new one seems to stir trouble.

As a matter of fact, YES....I installed the free version of ZA this morning, and not only did it slow everything down to a crawl, but I also had problems hitting Google and Yahoo....uninstalled it right away..

Yes I was having some problems with ZA Free also, not being able to access certain sites, playing my MMORPG, and online poker.

I checked out the ZoneLabs.com forums and discovered a lot of threads about problems with the new update. You'll see one of the admininstrators SLYFOX posting a lot, trying to help people out. That's gotta be a tough job.

Anyhoo, I might be switching to Kerio also, not sure yet.

I haven't had any probs. I'm using the latest ZoneAlarm Security Suite so I'm not sure if it is the same firewall that is in ZA Free. It doesn't slow down my system like Norton or McAffee did but lately when I shut down I get an end program dialog box, almost as though the program crashed at shut down. But it goes away after about two seconds so I'm not too worried about it.

I was using the free version with no problems and liked it enough to pay for it. when the subscription finnished I
bought the ZA security suite and installed this in place of Panda Titanium 2006 which I really dont like as it clashed with other programs and generally didn't work very well. But now I get an end program dialog box on shutdown like DJBPace07 does and up until now I wasn't sure what was causing it. Now I know ! doesn't seem to be causing a problem though. Not to sure how to stop this happening.

Leeboy

They may fix this problem with a future release of the Suite but since it's not causing probs I would just ignore issue.

Interesting... it seems that the ZA Security Suite is having no problems (no surprise there becauase they wouldn't be able to sell a problem causing suite); however, it appears that the free users are having problems. Hopefully they'll fix it up for us freebie hounds so that I can use their free firewall and recommend it to others. At the moment, I am rather unsatisfied with ZA, will not recommend their free firewall to others, and am using Sunblet Kerio's Free Firewall which is working excellently.

Well this thread confirms what I have suspected, I have been having major problems due to ZA free- the new version.
For instance - lots of blue screens, unable to log off.
Also unable to remove ZA, when I try, lose all access to everything.
Unable to even do a system restore.

Well, finally got it off (long scary story) , so now I have to find a new firewall to replace the ineffective WF.
What are the best free firewalls this side of ZA?

1. Sygate Free Firewall
2. Sunbelt Kerio Free Firewall
3. Outpost Firewall Free
4. Comodo Free Firewall

Some side notes:

1. The links for Sygate & Sunbelt take you to their Filehippo download mirror.
2. Comodo Free Firewall is a rather new firewall from the new security freeware company, Comodo.
3. Currently, I am using Sunbelt Free as mentioned; however, many people (including a large portion of the pros here) use Sygate Free although Sygate has now been bought by Symantec and its free firewall has now been cut off from all updates and support.

Thanks,
I DL kerio FW and will be trying that out for now.
Seems to use alot less resources than the ZA did. I went with the default settings rather than the learn as you go. Any advice here?

As an aside, my IT guy at work says he doesn't use any FW beyond Windows FW, trusting to this and his router/ISP to "protect".