Alternative to Zone Alarm

I've been using Zone Alarm Free for many years and have always liked it, but a recent installation has caused major crashing on my computer (Windows XP Pro, SP3). I read in the ZA forums that there were problems with this version, so I uninstalled it, including using the ZA tool and going through the registry to hopefully remove all traces. Then after emptying the recycle bin and caches and rebooting, I installed an earlier version, and actually I prefer the earlier version interface. But I had the same problems. It even caused crashes when I tried to disable it without uninstalling it. Yesterday the IT folks where I work tried to figure out what was causing all the crashes and narrowed it down to ZA. Uninstalling it stopped the crashes, although they had a lot of trouble getting my laptop to connect again to the DNS server, which they finally fixed, and they said there were still "tunnels" from ZA, but there wasn't time to deal with it yesterday. There are still issues to be resolved around the DNS server issue, and if they can't resolve them, I may eventually have to have the OS formatted. My dilemma is that after that, I'm afraid to then install ZA again and have the cycle start all over, but I want to have a software firewall in addition to the firewall in my router. My questions for this group are (1) whether you know how to get rid of the tunnels that remain without wiping the hard drive, and (2) whether you have recommendations for other free programs like ZA. Thank you.

Reply to
Andrea
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Comodo works okay for free. There is a firewall newsgroup.

FU set

Reply to
Jon

Best advice I've seen here...use a hardware firewall and XP's soft firewall.

Reply to
pheeh.zero

This is a firewall newsgroup. No?

Reply to
Pete

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