Zone Alarm v Microsoft Updates v Internet access (thread #4)

I've just had a friend of a friend of mine, ring me regarding Zone Alarm and no Internet access. :cry

We've already had multiple posts on this over the past day or two at:-
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=164013
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=164044
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=164059
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=164040

I've just printed them all out and am going to read them, over and over, until a plan of attack forms. Thanks to Halo for his various replies.

I will be visiting her this afternoon and will post tomorrow what happened and how I fixed it, I hope. :-D

Bazza

 

Plan of attack?

From http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/494108

Bazza

 

zonealarms are promising a better fix later today?? by autoupdate.
However most people won't know to change the slider to medium and they'll have no internet to find out about this so zonealarm update won't work.
You can't blame microsoft. Who would have thought that some people would be running xp with the most popular firewall. Completley unheard of and a scenario not worth testing for.

Setting the slider to medium works but the fixes below (from halo (thanks for the effort anyhow)) didn't for me.
http://forum.zonelabs.org/zonelabs/board/message?board.id=cfg&message.id=52727
If you also have a hardware firewall ....slider on medium shouldn't be a major risk in the short term.

Rolling back to a previous disk image and blocking this update is another option.
or uninstalling the hotfix.
I have now learned not to uninstall my hotfix uninstallers in ccleaner....doooh.

 

I visited the lady this afternoon. She had ZA and Auto Updates on, but no sign of the offending KB951748.

I eventually set ZA to Medium security level and all was well. She was able to access the Net. I'm confused but will wait for further news from ZA and /or MS before setting the security level back to Maximum.

Bazza

 

New Zone Alarm Press Release

http://download.zonealarm.com/bin/free/pressReleases/2008/LossOfInternetAccessIssue.html

 

Thanks studiot. I will download latest version of ZA. Bazza

===

 

Thanks for this post. I was wondering what happened when I did my windows updates today. I just did a system restore to before I ran the updates and decided not to install the windows updates for the time being.

 

According to Susan Bradley (a regular contributor) at www.windowssecrets.com latest edition of their paid newsletter, MS KB953230 also clashes with Zone Alarm and results in no access to the Internet.

This maybe why I could not find KB951748 on a ladies system, but her system still crashed. Will check her system out again soon. Bazza

 

hmm, this could explain a few things. i know for sure that i didn't do a "za" update on 1 comp, however "za" was blocking everything recently, the only way i could access the internet was turning off the firewall (i'm not sure if i did an ms update). i also, have a semi-new build and recently installed "za", but i don't think i've done any new ms updates (it's still sp2). anyway, i'll have to check this all out later on. - sos

 

Another victim. :cry The friend (who passed my name onto her friend) fell victim yesterday. MS Auto updates on and Zone Alarm = No net access.

Installed latest version of ZA and problem fixed. :cool Bazza