zonealarm problem

[PowerYoga]

every once in a while, after i've been using my computer a lot, my vsmon.exe will suddenly increase in CPU usage and ram usage, slowing my computer down to an unusable crawl speed.

how can I fix this? It just happens without me doing anything in particular.

 

[Palek]

You gotta give more details about your computer. OS, hardware (network I/F etc), connection type, software you've installed, whatever else you think might be relevant.

Have you tried to check in ZoneAlarm what programs have an open connection when the slowdown happens? You can see a up to 8 little icons somewhere around the top, these are icons of programs/services with open connections, and the ones that are flashing are currently active. You might have some trojan or some other nasty on your machine. Since ZoneAlarm filters your IP traffic, the slowdowns probably happen because of increased usage/overload.

Just a guess.

 

[OLtimrNewbie]

I have a similar problem. I'm getting bombarded with ICMP incoming blocked messages. About every 25 seconds. My ISP tech helper says the pings originate from infected PC's that have MS Blaster. Supposedly it pings looking for Win XP and the virus is carried in the 'ping'? Sounds like a pipe dream to me; but maybe it's possible. Software is not my forte. To speed things up when I don't need or want to be online; I just disconnect from my ADSL modem; and it does speed up. Zonealarm is not busy blocking and logging the attempts. Seems I read somewhere that Blaster is going to go quiet on Sep 10th. So if it does that should eliminate the pings...... if that really is the cause of them. I'm using Win ME so Blaster can't affect me anyway.

 

[Mitzi]

Originally posted by: OLtimrNewbie
I'm getting bombarded with ICMP incoming blocked messages. About every 25 seconds. My ISP tech helper says the pings originate from infected PC's that have MS Blaster. Supposedly it pings looking for Win XP and the virus is carried in the 'ping'? Sounds like a pipe dream to me; but maybe it's possible. .

That is basically how Blaster spreads, it actively looks for fresh hosts to infect. Just disable the ICMP Ping echo blocked message if you can, its nothing to loose sleep over.

 

[Rottie]

I had this problem before until I installed patch to fix it and the problem is gone.

 

[PowerYoga]

i'm not sure what is causing it, but how do you change the setting to ignore ICMP echo message?

i wasn't getting bombarded, it just sorta happened.

 

[Mitzi]

Originally posted by: PowerYoga
i'm not sure what is causing it, but how do you change the setting to ignore ICMP echo message?

i wasn't getting bombarded, it just sorta happened.

I really can't remember, its been a while since I used ZoneAlarm but IIRC theres a setting somewhere to disable warning. I'll have a look on the ZoneLabs site for you.

Edit: Don't know if this will do it but I found the following on the ZoneLabs support site...

By default, the privacy alert will appear whenever your privacy settings have blocked a component of a website. To turn off the Privacy Alert Advisor so that it will not pop up when you?re surfing the Internet, simply check the box to Turn Off Privacy Advisor while the privacy alert is popped up on your screen. You can instead do the following:

Open the ZoneAlarm Pro Control Center.
Click on PRIVACY -> MAIN tab.
In the COOKIE CONTROL box, click on the CUSTOM button.
Uncheck the SHOW PRIVACY ADVISOR box.
Click the APPLY button, then OK.

When the Privacy Advisor is turned on, and alerts you that a web page has been affected by Privacy settings, the web site will then show up on the Site List tab. The sites listed are dynamic - they do NOT remain on the list, unless you manually edit an entry. The entry then becomes permanent.