Any known compatibility probs between NAV 2004 and Zone Alarm Pro?

[Ken90630]

A friend of the family has a computer that has Norton Anti-Virus installed, but no firewall. And he's using a broadband connection. :Q He recently got the computer back from a local repair shop that charged him $230 to remove a worm (big surprise), reinstall Windows 98SE ( 🙁 yeah, I know ....), and install the NAV. Why they didn't install a firewall, I have no idea. 😕

I, of course, had nothing to do with this odd setup, but I've offered to fix the situation by installing a firewall for him. I'd like to install Zone Alarm Pro rather than a Norton firewall, but am wondering if there are any known incompatibilities between the Norton Anti-Virus program and the Zone Alarm firewall.

Anyone installed this combination? Does it work fine or are there any issues? Any comments/advice would really be appreciated. Thanks very much. 🙂

Ken

PS: My friend is a senior citizen and on a fixed income, so I need to keep things as inexpensive as possible for him. As such, a hardware firewall is not in the budget right now.

 

[mechBgon]

Hey Ken90630... I was wondering where you'd got to 😀

My mom & dad's system is running precisely that combination, on a WinXP SP2 system that has dial-up. They seem to cooperate well. For some reason I still occasionally see ZA Pro asking if I want to let the Common Client Updater use the Internet, but if that's the worst thing that happens... 🙂

Actually, why not the free basic ZoneAlarm? It works well for me (I got Pro for mom & dad so its options could be password-protected, but I don't need that myself)... He just needs to be trained to not sign himself up for ZoneAlarm Pro at the screen where it pushes that option in his face at each incremental upgrade, and to ignore the prompt that comes a couple weeks later stating that his would've-been trial license of ZA Pro has expired and would he like to buy it now 😛 I don't grudge them the advertising op, but you'd have to make sure he doesn't freak out and bite on it for no reason.

If you didn't already do so, you might want to go through all the Norton 2004 panels and ensure that it's using maximum heuristics and that he is (*cough*) never EVAR given the opportunity to override Norton. My mantra is "attempt to clean, then silently delete," or else auto-quarantine.

Hope that's some help 🙂

 

[Ken90630]

Hi, Tom,

Great to hear from you. I'd "got to" doing other things and haven't had time to do much computing the last few months. I really don't even have time to be dealing with this, but I have trouble saying no to friends & acquaintances who need help with their computers. 🙂 (Even if I'm not exactly the world's foremost expert ....)

Thanks for the info. To answer your questions:

I thought about the free version of ZA but wondered if it's as effective as the full retail version. I simply don't know much about it and can't remember reading or hearing much about it, so I thought I'd err on the side of caution (particularly since he has a broadband connection). That's about all that went into that decision. 😀

Good to know your folks are running this combo without any significant problems. I'll probably go ahead and pull the trigger on this unless I hear some contrary opinions. Anyone else care to chime in?