Some peculiar problems in XP with Zone Alarm and Tiny Personal Firewall. Pls Help!

[QwErTyBk]

I used Zone Alarm on my XP system for months without a real problem. Recently it has been 'forgetting' my settings. It always asks me to allow programs every time I reboot. I got tired of it, and tried Tiny Personal Firewall.

TPF has been working fairly well for the week or so I've been using it. Just one peculiar problem. My connection seems to shut itself off after a given amount of time. Usually after a few hours of being on the internet. I checked ipconfig form a dos promt and it said something about an auto-assigned address '169. . . 192' roughly. This is certainly not the correct ip, as all computers on the campus network are 137.238.xxx.xxx. Sure enough when I re-boot and run the dos prompt it shows:

Connection-specific DNS suffix blah.blah.edu
IP address 137.238.xxx.xxx
Subnet Mask 255.255.....
Default Gateway .....you get the picture....

That is when the internet works fine. But when it stops working and I run ipconfig, 4 lines show up and only two of them have information filled in. One like I said has some 'auto assigned ip' or somethign like that and it is some sort of invalid ip for the network '169....192'

When I reboot it works, but downloads keep canceling and it is a pain to reboot every few hrs.

Anyone know what is wrong with either ZA and its setting or preferably TPF and the problem with the IP address assignment.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Slogun]

I've had that problem on one of my machines. Here is a copy of a post of a fix by a guy named Fred:

e: Zone Alarm loses its settings on ever reboot.
Here is the fix for your problem.. I have to do this quite often, the TrueVector database files get corrupt and you have to remove them and start over. »www.zonelabs.com/services/support_issu..[?]

- Step 1. Open the ZoneAlarm program, go to Configure panel, and make sure the "Load At Startup" box is UNCHECKED.

- Step 2. Right-click on your taskbar, select "Toolbars," and make sure that the ZoneAlarm deskband is UNCHECKED as well (if it is checked, click on it to uncheck it).

- Step 3. Reboot. You should now have no ZoneAlarm processes running on your system.

- Step 4. Open the Internet Logs directory (in 95/98/ME this will be "c:\windows\internet logs", in NT and 2000 it will be c:\winnt\internet logs, in Windows XP it could be either of these folders). If you need to keep a copy of old alerts, copy the ZAlog.txt file to another location first - then delete ALL files in this folder.

- Step 5. Make sure you have emptied your Recycle Bin, then reboot your system.

- Step 6. You will need to start ZoneAlarm manually. (Click "Start," "Programs," "Zone Labs," "ZoneAlarm"). ZoneAlarm will start up again with a fresh database. Each program should ask for access again if the files were properly deleted.

- Step 7. Be sure to RECHECK anything you unchecked earlier.

 

[QwErTyBk]

Thanks for the info, but i'd rather not have to do that all the time. I'm trying to avoid having to re-train ZA, but doing that just forces me to do it less often. That is a better situation than the one I had, but certainly not what I need.

Anyone have any more info, preferably on Tiny Personal Firewall and my connection problem?

Please help I'm stumped!

-Q

 

[Bglad]

I've seen this too and Slogun got the fix that solved everything for me.

 

[Shagga]

Is WinXP's Firewall any good or should you be thinking of using ZA or some other 3rd party software?

 

[QwErTyBk]

The ZA fix didnt work for me. And like I said earlier, it is not the ideal situation by any means. Ive decided to ditch ZA and keep Tiny PF.

When my computer loses its connection to the net this is what shows up in ipconfig (as opposed to the working version in my first post)

Connection specific DNS suffix :
Autoconfiguration IP address : 169.xxx.x.192
Subnet Mask : 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway :

What is wrong with my connection? This happens at least once a day. Why am I getting this invalid auto configuration address?
Pls help me if you have any ideas. Thanks

-Qwertybk

 

[Slogun]

I ditched XPs firewall cause it interfered with networking. But if you want to test it out, go to grc.com

 

[QwErTyBk]

Never tried XP's firewall. There is always that feeling microsoft put some sort of backdoor into the firewall. You never know, it may send info to microsoft w/o you knowing. Testing XP's firewall with another 3rd party firewall and or packet sniffer will answer that. I say forget it and just use a 3rd party product.

Anyone have an answer to my above post? Im getting desperate.

-qwerybk