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Just installed the zone alarm update. My pc now takes about 3 minutes after boot up for the desktop icons to appear on the wall paper (win xp)

Has anyone here had the same problem?

I am considering getting rid of zone alarm, what would you recommend as an alternative?

I used Zone Alarm for a long time, but a couple of years back one if the updates caused many problems - I ditched it and have since been using Avast, (I'm also running Win XP -(SP3).


http://www.avast.com/en-gb/index

Thanks. But i also need a fire wall, avast is an antivirus, any more suggestions?

If its just a firewall, then I would give the free Commodo fire wall a try. I used to use it and never had any problems.

Alternatively, you could of course just use the Windows firewall which is a lot better than most people seem to give it credit for.

Regards
Ian

Are you after outbound protection or just a firewall in general? What are you wanting, feature wise?

I've not bothered in a long, long time other than what's provided by Windows.

A lot of people forget about the protection offered by a router (which 99% of broadband connections have, I'm sure). NAT in itself offers a level of inbound protection against day to day threats/scans/etc. You are not exposed directly like the days of dial-up and a public IP. If it's not 'requested' traffic, then there is no route for it to take - it's simply dropped at the perimeter.

In fact, some routers actually offer in/out bound firewalls too in addition to NAT (I'm not talking a shitty tick box SPI firewall) - I've got one here that does that.

It all boils down to what you want it for, I guess.

BG