Avoid ZoneAlarm 10!

[dbminter]

I've been giving ZoneAlarm 10 a throw around with various tests, and I'd like to pass along my review.

 

 

I played with the latest build, ZoneAlarm 10.1.079.000, and I have to say give it a pass until Version 11. Too many things that were broken or CAUSED other things to break. For instance, unless you go through a lot of hoops and disable a service of ZA, Alcohol disc emulation stops working. The GUI won't even load properly because the virtual drives aren't there. They show up as physical drives in the software. My big deal break was when it broke Firefox. I did NOT install the FF plugin and it STILL broke Firefox. Firefox just refused to load if there was no network connection. What would happen when FF was closed and attempted to reopen, it simply would never open. Trying to kill off the application in Task Manager returned the error that the application was unable to terminate. Nothing fixed it except a drive image restore. Unloading ZA, uninstalling ZA, restarting the PC. Nothing would fix ZA's breaking of FF 8.01.

 

 

So, for these reasons, I've gotta say pass on ZoneAlarm 10 and I'll wait for 11 before I engage another free trial.

[dbminter]

Version 10 is really fucked up! I discovered it wasn't no Internet connection that was breaking Firefox with ZA 10. It was restoring a disk partition that ZA 10 didn't like! What happens is if you restore a Macrium Reflect backup with Version 5's rescue media off of a thumb drive, then Firefox REFUSES to open at all with ZA resident! This does NOT happen with Version 9 of ZA, so, the problem is ZA 10 itself.

[dbminter]

It also doesn't matter what version of Firefox you're running. I discovered there was a newer Firefox than my current version. For whatever reason, automatic updates have not worked for my Firefox since Version 7. Once again, too many revisions in a row syndrome. Anyway, found the newer versions of ZA and FF and tried them out again with my usual rigorous tests. Sure enough, it does not matter what version of FF you have. I didn't expect it would matter as this error was NOT present in ZA 9 and is in ZA 10, meaning it's ZA's fault. Wouldn't be the first time they screwed up ZA. Back with like version 8, there were like 3 revisions where if I installed them, all of my USB drives would disappear!

[dbminter]

I discovered what was causing this. A bizarre conflict between disk images made with Macrium Reflect 4, restored with Macrium Reflect 5, Firefox, and ZoneAlarm 10. I discovered if you had an image by Version 4 and restored it with Version 5, the Firefox issue mentioned with ZA 10 occurred. If you made the image with Version 5 of MR and restored it with Version 5 of MR, then Firefox and ZA 10 behaved just fine. What a weird issue!

[dbminter]

Turns out my solution was only temporary. On the next attempt to update Firefox, the problem returned. So, the problem lies entirely with ZoneAlarm 10, as ZA 9 does not have this issue.

[dbminter]

I think, though, I've found a workaround. First, copy the folder found at C:\Users\<Account Name>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles to an alternate location. Next, uninstall Firefox with the option to delete the user profile data. Then, delete the profile folder you just copied from C:\Users\<Account Name>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles. Then, install FF and test that it runs. Then, restore the folder you copied from C:\Users\<Account Name>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles to C:\Users\<Account Name>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles and choose to replace all files and folders contents. Lastly, test that FF still runs, and, it should.

[dbminter]

I fucking KNEW this work around would fail on the next update of Firefox! Stupid CheckPoint fuckers!

[dbminter]

Well, now there's a new workaround. Uninstall Firefox as stated before, uninstall ZoneAlarm 10, reinstall FF, reinstall ZA 10, and restore profile data backed up before uninstallation of FF. One SHOULDN'T have to jump through such hoops, so my statement about CheckPoint being fuckers is still valid.

[dbminter]

Well, that doesn't work either. Uninstalling ZoneAlarm and attempting to reinstall it fails because it kills all Internet connections! Wow, is ZA 10 really fucked up!

 

 

The only solution to this problem: don't use ZA 10! Wait for ZA 11!