If I leave the machine say to answer the door when I come back I cant access the net with Win or Firefox browser and I cannot send or receive mail or use news groups, without rebooting the machine. I have looked at zone alarm setting and they seem normal. I wonder if the ISP (Telewest) are blocking me after a set time of non activity I'm at my wits end I cant answer the phone with out it locking up. Does anyone have an idea what is happening and how to unlock to resume without having to reboot?
There's a setting in Zone Alarm that will allow you to disable internet access if the PC isn't used for a period of time. You need to check whether you have accidentally set this to ON.
Bad idea. Use something like this, even if you have only one PC
formatting link
with
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formatting link
set up a user account on the PC instead of running as administrator if you haven't already.
In the meantime Start, Control panel, Switch to classic view, Power options. Is everything except the monitor set to Never?
Is the cable modem connected to the PC using usb? If it is then changing it to ethernet is likely to fix the problem. But don't connect the modem directly to the PC. Get a box as described above and put it between the modem and the PC.
I have mozilla forefox.. Can you enlarge on your suggestion I give my logfiles to a third party please? I use an ethernet via telewest's cable modem.which has a hardware fire wall but to be honest I cant access this as it on the end of the fire wire cable (unles I'm missing something) As for power it is is setup as you suggested.
Thanks Jason and ABC.
Please put me rightif I've missed something or got the wrong end of the stick. Regards MikeS
And then the OP will allow any old app to access the internet (trojans, keyloggers). I would always recommend an outgoing firewall of some kind being installed. That way you have control on what apps have access to the internet and you can keep an eye on your PC.
I suggest you re read what the OP wrote and then ask yourself how we might figure out whether this problem is caused by ZA or something else. If you need any hints let me know.
Sorry if that was a bit harsh but I really don't need to be reminded how wonderful personal firewalls are. I've been configuring them for other people for at least 6 years. Mostly for people who had no clue what they do or what the popup messages mean but still insist on keeping the firewall software installed because it makes them _feel_ more secure, and anyway the BBC told them to install a firewall so I must be wrong to tell them their personal firewall is causing them more problems than they'd have had otherwise.
I think the trouble with my machine was the power control was set to switch of the modem after a time of inactivity. The first thing I tried was to disable Zone Alarm to see if it was the cause. I think it would be helpful if programs that needed access in and out of a system had plain language titles as well as the programming titles, as it is not clear (sometimes) from their name tags what programs they represent and if one should grant permission. When I disabled Zone Allarm I clean the machine with Spybot and Adware. and use Adwatch to monitor what programs are active in and out of the machine.
I run my machine on a belt and braces approach and would recommend using more than one intrusion detector because, I have found for example, Ad aware and Spybot do not individually pick up all the nasties. Unfortunate programs, as with advice, no one source is the absolute answer as we all have our own axe to grind. It seems to me computing and programs that run them, are follows the rules of evolution similar the biological systems. this begs the question, what stage are we at now? Dinosaur.
The name of a program tells you very little. If ZA does not give the full path to the program (the folder it's in) then it may as well not bother telling you anything at all.
I run spybot s&d sometimes too, but it never finds anything because I never permit any additional programs to be added to the system, so I don't really need to use spybot at all.
I think it's a better idea not to allow the nasties to be installed in the first place. If you don't add untrusted code to your system then you don't need to remove it.
Windows does seem to be adapting to its home user environment, slowly.
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