Zone Alarm shuts down interenet access when computer is idle

You sure it's not power management shutting down the ethernet card. My ethernet card will shutdown when going into power saving mode. Go to device manager and select properties for the ethernet card, then look at the power management tab, you can disable/enable the shutting down of the ether net card there. That's how it's been with my last two ethernet cards anyway.

You must not do that, or you're risking getting infected. If you did so already for more than just some seconds, it is very likely that you're infected already.

If you have Windows XP, then just use the Windows-Firewall instead of Zonealarm.

Yours, VB.

Even when he's behind a NAT router?

I am having the same problem on my home PC (XP Pro, no router). About 2 weeks ago, I removed and reinstalled ZA, and it was fine until yesterday. Weird. Checked for spyware and was clean.

Craig

I prefer Zone Alarm because it asks for program access literally every time a program tries to gain access to the internet, unless you make a rule. I use file sharing programs (a no no, i understand) and it lets you access the programs and deny it to act as a server. Also for spyware which i always get using the file sharing networks, it asks for access to the net which i immediately deny (weather bug is trying to access the internet - hey now i know i have to get rid of a weather bug). For someone at such high risk, Adaware only finds about 10 things to delete per month, and this has been since I have used zone alarm. For anyone planning to lecture me about this, I have a junk computer that I don't care about for the file sharing stuff. If it is destroyed it will not matter, and there is nothing private (not even my name or email address) contained on this computer. i mainly just want to end the annoyance of zone alarm ending internet access.

if this was the case, it would probably not come back on when zone alarm is disabled, no?

There doesn't seem to be any information about this problem anywhere on the internet. I too have reinstalled several times with no or only temporary effect. This happens even on my new computer at work.

[Pardon my lack of technical terminology]

I read *somewhere* that some ISPs send out an "are you there" message, looking for PCs that are connected to them but not actively being used. In the old dial-up days, they would kick you off for inactivity. Could a similar thing be happening here? BTW, I connect via DSL.

Craig

I haven't used ZA for a few years now, but there used to be an option to click that would block all access after X minutes of inactivity and/or if the screensaver kicked in. Look through the options and see if that box is marked. ZA may have set that as a default to "on" in later versions.

The nvidia interface gives the same. When a program wants through, you can say yes always, yes this time, get more details, no this time, no always, whatever you like. And you can edit the rules.

Just countering the disinofrmation spread by those who cannot be bothered to figger out how to use it. :)

Could be that the dhcp lease expired while ZA had everything blocked. Rebooting your pc causes it to make a new request for an IP address, and all is well again until the next time ZA times you out.

Found this on the ZoneLabs forums. I have not verified this fixes the problem, but it sounds like a good start. (I had to open a Command Prompt window rather than do it from the Run box.)

"Make sure your DNS and DHCP servers are in the Trusted zone. Open a command prompt window by typing command in 'Run'and then type ipconfig /all in the window that opens, now press enter. In the returned data list will be a line DNS and DHCP Servers with the IP address(s) listed out to the side. In ZA on your machine on the Firewall>Zones tab click Add and then select IP Address for one address or IP Range for two IP addresses. Making sure the Zone is set to Trusted. Click OK and then Apply and you should be all set."

Craig

Maybe, he's behind a NAT router in a comany's network, and there in the inner zone with two extra firewalls until the Internet connection. Who knows? ;-)

Well, I just wanted to send a warning to him, that disalbling the packet filter on an unprotected box is a very dangerous thing.

Yours, VB.

This is only true for programs, which allow to be controlled. For all other programs, there is no warning message at all. This is not, what I would call "secure".

If you're not believing that, then I have some POC code for you here, which "phones home" in spite of any "Personal Firewall":

It uses Internet Explorer, so you need to have Internet Explorer already running for that test.

This is not an Internet Explorer problem, though. This way is possible with every browser; I have a version for Mozilla Firefox, too.

Yours, VB.