Saturday, May 29, 2010

How to fix your computer freezing after the latest ZoneAlarm upgrade

After the latest ZoneAlarm update (I got it on Friday, May 28), my computer started slowing and freezing. I'm running Windows XP on a five-year-old computer, 2.8 GHz processor and 2 gigs of RAM. Not the best, but it had served me well right up until that upgrade.

Sometimes after boot-up, nothing would work. Like I'd click on something and after five minutes it still hadn't loaded, and even the Task Manager would freeze. I also started getting errors when launching Sims 3, "Application failed to initialize properly." I tried a system restore to before the ZoneAlarm upgrade, but that didn't help.

The ultimate solution ended up being to uninstall and reinstall the ZoneAlarm upgrade, but not installing all the components. Unfortunately I failed to write down the exact name of the interface items, but there's a window with three checkboxes asking what you want to install. The first checkbox is the regular firewall, I forget what the second is, and the third offers to put a ZoneAlarm security function in your Google toolbar. If you uncheck the second, the third is greyed out.

The first time around (which caused all the problems), I'd chosen all three. The second time around, I chose only the first of the three. The installation went smoothly and there have been no problems since.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here's an idea - don't run Windows crap. Get a Mac and then you don't have to run ZoneAlarm or any of that other garbage.

impudent strumpet said...

I've always wondered: does that ever actually work? I always have Mac people scolding me about my computer, as though I haven't made my life choices mindfully and I'm just going to go "Well, golly, I'd better drop everything and buy a new computer as per your specifications!" Have you ever at all ever in your life actually had anyone do that?

If anything, it gives me a reason to not want to use a Mac, because I don't want to become that kind of person.

Unknown said...

Not really a technical person here but Mac or Windows, whichever system it is, they're still computers. I'm not really specific with what system to use as long as it works.

Anyway, I had an experience using ZoneAlarm, too. I was in a hectic schedule that time and I couldn't afford to waste my time working on a computer that's sluggish. So I had it fixed by a computer repair man from Boston. IT consultants in there were great. They fixed my computer in no time!