Internet disappearance / zone alarm issues

I have a problem that has me completely stumped. I hope someone here can help me...

I'm running Windows XP, SP3, using Zone Alarm 8 as my firewall. The other night I downloaded the most recent update for Zone Alarm and a few Windows Updates. Ever since then I've had nothing but problems.

When I installed the ZA update and had to restart, my comp wouldn't shut down. I turned it off manually and turned it back on, but when it started nothing loaded except for my desktop background - no icons, no start menu, I don't think my drivers even loaded because it didn't make the typical startup sound. I played with it for a while and managed to get task manager to come up, and after that everything else started. Once I got it started up I did a system restore to the previous night, just in case it was the ZA update that caused this. (No other changes had been made to my computer)

Ever since then I have been having issues with the internet and ZA. I can connect, and things like Trillian work fine. However, after a few minutes (while still showing as connected) all of a sudden no websites will load. I can restart and connect fine again, but it does the same thing after a few minutes.

I saw on the ZA forum that some people were having issues with the latest update, so I tried to turn off ZA and see if I could stay connected that way. To my surprise, the ZA icon in my tray wasn't there. I went to the start menu programs to try to open ZA from there, but it wouldn't open. I went to the ZA folder on my computer and couldn't get it to open there either. I figured if I can't open it I can't turn it off or check to see what it is allowing and not allowing. I got frustrated and decided to just uninstall it and download it again later... but it wouldn't let me uninstall! It gave me a popup message saying that the True Vector monitor (vsmon.exe) couldn't be uninstalled, to shut down anything else that uses it. To my knowledge nothing else uses that, right?

Well I tried restoring a few more times, going back to before I even downloaded the update file, still no luck. I couldn't get it to uninstall, so finally I just deleted all the ZA folders and the related files in the registry. If there is any trace of ZA on my comp, I don't know where it could be. Still having the same problems. I uninstalled the Windows Updates the first time, and restored back to a time before they were downloaded. I ran spyware and virus scans and found nothing other than cookies. I cleaned out my temp files and my cache. No matter what I do I get the same problem.

I'm on a computer at the library because I can't stay connected long enough to type anything this long. Does anyone have any ideas here? What is causing my to not be able to stay connected, and what do I need to do to fix it? I'm not too good with registry stuff and I'm scared to death of BIOS, so if there's a simple fix for this I'd love to hear it. Right now I'm worried my only options are to wipe my harddrive clean and start over, but backing everything up would be such a pain. If anyone has any ideas please let me know, either on here or on email (thenarrow364 @ yahoo dot com) since I can usually stay connected long enough to check my email but not much else. Thanks!

 

Oh and FYI... when I deleted Zone Alarm I turned on Windows firewall and made sure both Firefox and IE were allowed to connect to the internet.

In case there might be any compatibility issues... I use Firefox (the most recent version, not sure what the number is), AVG, Adaware, Spybot, Spywareguard, Spyware Blaster, HiJack This. Everything is up to date, and like I said I uninstalled the most recent Windows Updates, but I was current up until then.

 

Oh and one more thing...

When I still had it on there, ZA would show up in my task manager as normal, but vsmon.exe would appear and disappear and reappear in some random place on the task manager list. When it would reappear, my CPU usage would shoot sky high, and when it disappeared it would go back down. It never stayed in one place long enough to end process or anything.

And I've been reading what others have written and I see a few have recommended CCleaner or something to that effect. I just downloaded it and when I get home I'll install it on my comp and see if that gets rid of any lingering traces of Zone Alarm. I've also downloaded two other firewalls that were recommended at this and other sites, I figure I can try one and see if I have the same problems, if not then it's a ZA problem and I'm more than happy to go with a different firewall.

 

Anybody???

Since my last post I have run CCleaner, it didn't help. I tried Winsock Fix and that did nothing. I downloaded a cleaner that someone at the Zone Alarm forum recommended, that didn't work either. I'm seriously running out of ideas here...