ZoneAlarm Free's vsmon.exe stealing CPU after upgrade

I have had ZA Free running on my Dell Inspiron 6000, WinXP SP3 now for a while, without any problems; it has showed up low on the CPU meter - however, I got a message that I needed to update it in order to stay protected a week or two ago.

I downloaded the new version - ran the installer, which asked for permission to remove the old version - I clicked OK, was prompted to restart the system after installation - and it's been awful ever since.

The vsmon.exe process is bogging down the system - it seems WHENEVER there is any internet activity, often maxing total CPU consumption to 100 for extended periods of time.

Even with firefox off, while downloading a tv episode from itunes - which took over an hour - vsmon.exe was doing 40-60% CPU load through the whole thing, which seems, mildly said, ridiculous.

Haven't tried to reinstall it, since essentially it seemed to remove itself before installing the new version.

Is there anything to do, or should I just kill it and find something else? (Had Comodo before, but found it a bit annoying with warnings about just about everything all the time. My exp with ZA so far has been that it's been almost completely stealth.

Thanks in advance!
BJ

 

You can try PC Tools Firewall Plus

Task Manager shows the following two processes:
FirewallGUI.exe 2,160K
FWService.exe 2,248K

Very little CPU usage.
(Windows XP SP3)

 

I am searching to the internet finding this solution

i found the solution (zone alarm pro)

go to command => msconfig => services => truevector internetmonitor (manufracture zone labs,LLC) uncheck => apply => on the warming “ok” => reboot and login as admin now vsmon.exe takes around 26.344kb of your memory
spyware & email protection are on !
source

http://jeeezelouise.wordpress.com/2006/12/15/vsmonexe-chewing-up-the-cpu/

solution by On July 28, 2007 at 3:29 am geek said:

try it my friend !! :wave

 

Just like mjnc, I've got PC Tools FW as well and it shows:

FirewallGUI 2868
FWservice 1960

XP Home SP3