For the past few weeks, I’ve been putting up with an annoying problem with ZoneAlarm Pro and Weather Watcher: Very often (as in several times per day), ZoneAlarm will prompt me to allow access to “Object XXXXXX”, where “XXXXXX” is some random number. This happens when Weather Watcher is trying to update.
I’ve seen this problem mentioned in newsgroup posts, but not with Weather Watcher. It has something to do with Weather Watcher child processes, which ZoneAlarm can’t keep track of, I think.
No, I am not claiming this to be a problem with Weather Watcher. Even though the problem doesn’t really happen with any other application, I think it’s a ZoneAlarm bug. This problem is even mentioned on the Zone Labs site (not in connection to Weather Watcher, of course), although it was a very long time ago, and was supposedly fixed at the time.
I’ve tried deleted my ZoneAlarm databases, but it does no good. I truly don’t think anyone can help, but it can’t hurt to ask.
I’d rather get rid of ZoneAlarm Pro then Weather Watcher, so unless a miracle happens, that piece of crap will be history pretty soon…
quote:[i]Originally posted by Mike Singer[/i]
Scott -- How do you tell Zone Alarm to allow certain programs to run?
Generally, you wait for each program to attempt an outbound connection, and/or attempt to listen on a given port. Then, ZoneAlarm alerts you as to what's going on, and you either "allow" or "deny" the action. And of course, when I've done this, I've also selected the option to have ZoneAlarm "remember" the choice I made.
Beyond that, I’ve even tried configuring ZoneAlarm Pro to ignore the MD5 on Weather Watcher–and only identify it by path. I’ve messed around with the “component” entries. I’ve deleted the databases. Nothing works. It’s a bug in ZoneAlarm Pro, and it’s an aggravating one at that.
When Weather Watcher updates the weather, it uses the DL.exe program within the Weather Watcher install folder. That program does most of the downloading. Try allowing DL.exe through the firewall as well?
quote:[i]Originally posted by Mike Singer[/i]
When Weather Watcher updates the weather, it uses the DL.exe program within the Weather Watcher install folder. That program does most of the downloading. Try allowing DL.exe through the firewall as well?
Already done. I've since heard from another user of ZAP who is having the same problem. This is a bug in ZoneAlarm Pro. And as promised, I've dumped the piece of crap. I now use Sygate.