Skip to main content

Zonealarm and Vista BSOD

I was playing around with the installation of Vista on my Macbook a little yesterday and decided to try installing some anti-virus and firewall software. For the anti-virus I installed AVGFree, primarily because its free :) and also because Ive been using it for years now without any issues. Thankfully it held true to its reputation and is working quite happily under vista.

Zonealarm unfortunately didnt...

I downloaded and installed the latest free version from their site, which states that it supports Vista. I had no problems downloading it but halfway through the install it froze and then after a couple of minutes the whole computer locked up and became totally unresponsive. I left it alone for around 20 minutes to see if it would sort itself out but unfortunately no joy, so I performed a hard reset by holding down the power button.

After rebooting, Vista obviously complained and grumbled about being shutdown so rudely and went through a disk check, got to the logon screen and then before I could enter the password, boom there was a nice BSOD. First one in a long time I have to admit. I rebooted and got to the logon screen a second time and the same thing happened. Starting to see a pattern here? :)

Luckily having worked in IT for the past few years I have lots of patience for these types of problems so I booted up again, this time in safe mode and managed to log in. Oh happy day :) I then removed zonealarm, rebooted once more and since then everything has been fine and dandy. I think I will give it a couple more weeks and then try again, as like AVG, Ive used Zonealarm a lot in the past and never had problems with it. Admittedly Im not so worried about it as I only tend to game or "mess around" in windows, most of the time Im working in OS X but even so, you tend to feel naked without a firewall these days.

Has anyone else had much luck with firewalls under Vista? Any recommendations?

Comments

roj said…
Interested to read your comments re Zonealarm and bsod. I also have had no trouble with either AVG or Zonealarm over the years until Vista. The thought of ZA causing it is a line I will now pursue!
13 September 2007 at 11:18
Unknown said…
I had the exact same problem a few days ago. The only difference is that the installation was successful, but a few seconds after it was complete, I got a BSOD. Same BSOD when I restarted the computer and I also had to boot in safe mode and uninstall Zone Alarm. It's surprising that such a critical bug went through. It must be quite upsetting for users who don't know about Safe mode!
25 September 2007 at 10:34
Andrew Proudlove said…
I couldnt agree more - Im really surprised that this made it through test and quality control.

As I mentioned in one of my posts today though, Im about to install a new HDD into my new MBP and I will use the opportunity to reinstall Windows XP again, Ive gave Vista enough time I think and I really do prefer XP. Besides as I tend to use it mainly as a glorified games platform (time allowing), XP seems to be the better choice for this.

It should also mean though that I can put zonealarm back on without having any issues...

Fingers crossed anyway.
28 February 2008 at 11:10
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Slow shutdown with Leopard and hibernate

Just for kicks yesterday, I reset my hibernatemode to 3 as I had previously set it to 0 as outlined in one of my posts below. Interestingly enough, my MBP now shuts down just as quickly as it did when I had hibernatemode set to 0 and thats also without having to eject my windows bootcamp partition.  At the moment I have no idea why this is the case, I still have to check my log files but I thought I would share the info at least.
4 comments
Read more

Macbook Pro Upgrade

Ive finally finished the last (for now) of the upgrades to my first gen core duo Macbook Pro and I have to admit that I'm quite happy at the moment. The first upgrade was a few weeks ago, when I exchanged the superdrive that came with the laptop for another one, specifically an 8x speed, dual-layer burner (a step up from the 4x burner that came with the Macbook). The model is a HL-DT-ST DVD +- RW GWA4080M, which I found on eBay and is supposedly an authentic Apple replacement part (the sticker on the drive has the Apple logo on it). So far the drive has been working fine, Im playing with the idea of upgrading the firmware on it but on the other hand I'm thinking, if its not broken... I guess I need to do some more research first. My second upgrade was a new hard drive - I installed the Western Digital Scorpio 250GB WD2500BEVS-11UST0, it formats to around 232GB which is still a big jump from the standard 100GB drive that came pre-installed. I performed both upgrades following th...
3 comments
Read more

Slow shutdown with Leopard - Possible Solution?

I was just playing around with this again and remembered that in the past, having external drives connected could cause the computer to shutdown slowly, one of the things that didnt occur to me until now though, was that my Windows Bootcamp partition may be an external drive of sorts, or at the least, may be affecting the shutdown cycle. So I ejected it and then tried shutting down. The computer now shuts off in 15 seconds or less as opposed to almost a minute before, it still doesnt seem as fast as a new install of Leopard but its definitely a big improvement. The question now though is why or what is it doing with the Windows partition before it shuts down? It also possibly invalidates the earlier line of research I was following with the menu applets, so clearly I need to look into this some more but its the first definite improvement I have seen. If you try this and it improves your shutdown speed please let me know, it will be interesting to compare.
4 comments
Read more