Zone Alarm blocking Comcast

Asking this question for my mother. First she hardly knows anything about computers. I don't know the answer to this one. She has the most recent update of the free zone alarm. She just switched over to comcast. Zone alarm is blocking comcast. In order for her to go online, she has to disable zone alarm which is not a good thing.

Does anyone have comcast and zonealarm, who knows what settings I should tell her? Here is a list of programs that she has that I'm not sure what they are.

Application Layer Gateway Server
Control Center Main
Generic Host Process
She said she has green checkmarks for internet explorer. The rest are programs that wouldn't affect being able to get online such as ad-aware.

Also she has under firewall main internet zone security set as high, and trusted zone security set as medium. Under program controls main she has program control set as medium.

The person installing the cable told her just to disable zonealarm and that he didn't have any problems, rolling eyes and shaking head. The tech support at comcast said that there is a imcompability issue with zone alarm, and basically she had to figure what settings she had to change on her end.

Any help would be appericated.

 

I have ZoneAlarm free version and Comcast also. And I have no troubles. My firewall and program controls are set the same as yours.

#1. In the list of Programs on the Program Control panel, are there any in there that have a red X on them? If so, what's the program and is the X in the Access or the Server column?

#2. Is there a home network set up (more than one computer accessing the internet)?

#3. What version of ZoneAlarm are you running (Overview panel, Product Info tab)

If you have a version less than 6.1.744.000 then get a new update. When you install it, follow the instructions carefully. And when you do, do NOT let the installation set the program access. Have it let you choose for each program that tries to access the internet. In this way, you can go slowly and when you first try to access the internet with nothing else going on, and you'll be able to tell ZoneAlarm Yes, and to Remember. Keep saying Yes, and Remember for the programs like IE, svshost, generic host, etc. until you can fully access the internet by going to a page like www.comcast.net

I hope this helps you.

Tracy

 

Thanks Tracy. I'll relay the information. I've been trying to help my mom over the phone. Yesterday she updated Zone Alarm to the newest version. I'm not sure exactly what she choose during installation. I told her to keep the settings she has.

She has the free version of Zone Alarm. No, she does not have home network since that is the only computer she has.

The programs I listed are the ones I'm not familiar with. I did tell her to try a process of elimination where she would allow each one of them. I know she tried to allow server for one of them. Otherwise I had her block all the server side, since Zone Alarm said there would be very few programs that required to allow server.

Do you have all of your settings medium, or some medium and some high. She has all medium, except under firewall internet zone high.

I'll be down for a visit during Easter, and can actually look at her computer. Any info I can obtain now is of great use. Hopefully we can solve this problem before then. Thank you very much.

 

PS, she originally had all three of the programs listed above with red x's.

 

those that you listed ARE needed for access.
what you CAN do to fix it when you're there is this:
go to the Program Control panel, click on the Programs tab
Right click on each of the items listed that have red x's and choose Remove.
You'll eventually get a popup from ZoneAlarm asking for permission. If all you did was open an IE windows, then put the check in the box for Remember and say Yes. Just open one program at a time and give it a few minutes before you try to open another program.
(Or you could click right ON the red X and change it from Block to read Ask and it'll basically do the same thing....ask you next time, giviing you the option to Remember)

Never put a check in the box for Remember and click on No unless you're absolutely SURE that you never ever want it to access the internet. there probably won't be many. When in doubt, just click on No withOUT the remember. and next time you try to start the program, it'll ask you again. When you get tired of ALWAYS saying no to something, then it's a pretty safe bet that you could put in the check for Remember, then click on No.

It sounds like what she did was that she DID put the check in the box for Remember and then clicked on No.

My Medium and High settings are the same as yours.

Tracy

 

Tracy, thank you. Problem solved. I took somewhat of a drastic measure, but it worked. First I had them only remove the programs I had listed, but it didn't work. Then I had them remove all the programs listed in Zone Alarm. It turned out we needed to allow PXclient along with General Host Process. I honestly thought PXclient was only for the dial up provider they had before switching to comcast. They are fully protected now, and know what to do when zone alarm pops up the messages. I'm sure if they forget, they will call me up again.

Thank you very much, I would have never thought of removing any of the programs.

 

Glad to have helped.

Tracy