I too have used Zone Alarm PRo for a few years. Back in July I upgraded to thier version 6.5.722 and started having problems. I followed many suggestions in their user forums and nothing worked. I even emailed tech support and thye told me it was a windows problem. Earlier this week I removed Zone Alarm and installed Comodo Firewall after reading about COmodo on PCmag’s website. I have no complaints and everything is working perfectly. I will gladly spread the work on this fine product.
Hi Dok & ALL!
I’m also a recent convert to comodo. I left Mcafee for Comodo and was totally happy. Well, I found ZA, the full security suite, onsale for just $9.99 instead of the normal $49.99 price so I jumped and bought it for a try. Let me say after about 1 hour of “testing” I am back with Comodo and here to stay. Here is what I have to say about ZA.
- It seemed cobbled together in my opinion.
- Even though I paid for it it had a sharware feel to it, again in my opinion
- Am I wrong but virus scan and spyware scan were seperate? With security today the line between a virus and spyware is getting blurred so I find it hard to believe they can keep the two seperate and still be secure.
- Again, my opinion but the UI looked terrible, liked it was designed back in the windows 3.1 era.
Just my 2 cents but again thanks to Comodo for an excellent product, you made a loyal customer out of me and I am eager to spread the word. By (J) (L)
Welcome aboard Nickal!
I totally share your view about one product for anti-malware and not 2 or 3 different products…
Melih
ZoneAlarm passed their use by dated a few years ago. There are several free firewalls that are far better.
My first post here. I just d/l the COMODO firewall last night and am ready to install it and ditch ZA. But I want to make sure my PC is really OK. When I upgraded from ZA 5.x to 6.x it would randomly lose my connection. I did a clean uninstall (several times), went back to the working 5.x version, but now it too would randomly lose my connection. Renewing my IP address usually would solve the problem. But sometimes I would have to Restart my computer. Never had this problem before. As others here have mentioned, the ZA forum provided no help. I am also using using Norton AV, Spyware Doctor, Ad-Aware & Spybot.
So my concern is that something has been corrupted within my system by ZA. I would like to make sure everything is OK before installing COMODO. In fact just this evening the NAV icon disappeared from my system tray and the only way I could shut off my PC is by pushing the power button! So something is wrong.
I have also tried using Winsock Fix which is supposed to change & correct some Registry Keys. But when it goes to backup this area of the Registry I get several error messages.
I’m hoping some of the ZA to COMODO converts can provide a clue where to look for the problem.
Thanks in advance.
Hello Stumped2
I am the wrong person to provide advice on your existing problems (I get help from kind experts at places like http://www.computerhope.com/basic.htm and http://qunu.com/ and Computing.NET Answers - A Place to Ask & Answers Tech Related Questions! - Computing.NET Answers Forum when stumped)!
However, as the person who started this thread I am happy to go on record and say that after a month or more using CPF I am still totally happy with it. A month is a long time on the internet! It seems to be working away quietly in the background doing its job and only occasionally asks me for a decision. I remember ZA was constantly making me aware of its presence in one way or another!
I hope you will end up like me - a happy bunny!
Denis (V)
Hi, I don’t know if you have OEM or full XP\Windows of some sort. If you go to start, run , type cmd, and in the command window type sfc /scannow this may fix any errors you have. You may need your original Windows disk for this but it has been a life saver to many. It takes a bit of time as well but is well worth it if some registry keys are buggy. I suggest though disconnect from internet physically, shut down all programs that don’t need to run, security software, anything you can. It makes the process run smoother.
Paul
This sums up my view perfectly. You will not go wrong with Comodo.
I did the sfc /scannow and no errors were found. I did a winsock reset that I read about & we’ll see if that makes any difference. I just don’t want to add any new programs till I get things sorted out just in case I have to reinstall Window and everything else.
Hi Guys,
I’m a brand new convert from ZA pro to Comodo and, like so many others, although I have months to go on my ZA subscription I think I’ll be sticking with CPF, or if it doesn’t turn out to be good for my purposes, then I’ll give Outpost a try.
I have one question for more experienced CPF users. My ZA pro began to develop a problem over the past few months of randomly shutting down its true vector engine and thereby leaving my computer unprotected by the firewall for hours at a time. This is the principle reason I left ZA. My question is, has anyone found that CPF has a tendency to shut down from time to time? In other words, besides being a strong firewall (which clearly comodo is) is it a reliable one? And if it’s reliable can it be said to be rock solid? If I find it is rock solid I’m here to stay.
I haven’t noticed any tendency in CPF to shut down. I think it’s the most reliable firewall I’ve tested, and I really gave it a hard time. I even killed both cpf.exe and cmdagent.exe with special tools for the purpose (yes, it can be done with ANY firewall), but noticed that COMODO’s driver shut down Internet access completely until they were brought back to life again, so if you have a big bad rootkit on your computer, it can’t get out by killing COMODO! If there’s someone who wouldn’t call that rock solid, please step forward. So, chopinhauer: it seems like you’re here to stay…
Paul Wynant
Moscow, Russia
That’s good to hear. Though, I must admit, I’m getting a lot of what CPF calls “high severity events” when running utorrent. I’ll have to look this up in the forums to see whether this is bad, and if so it means my security is being compromised.
My hardware, software, and surfing habits are strikingly similar to yours: 7-year-old, 400 MHz Pentium II running Win 2K, Firefox, MS Office, AVG. The only firewall I’d ever used was ZA free. Never any complaints, really, but like a lot of other popular apps it seemed to get more bloated and hog more resources with each release.
I recently switched to the Comodo firewall. It certainly seems to have way more features than ZA free, and uses far fewer resources. I really like it.
One important difference that should be noted is:
Free versions of the paid ones, usually keep the main security features for the Paid for version. So their free version is usually less secure. With Comodo, you get the best possible security (even better than the paid for ones check this http://www.matousec.com/projects/windows-personal-firewall-analysis/leak-tests-results.php
as you can see, the paid for version of ZA did worse than Comodo (which is free 
) .
Its our job to secure you! for free!
This is Comodo’s goal!
Melih
chopinhauer,
If you’re getting “High Severity” alerts, it’s because utorrent’s communication attempt is violating a setting in your CPF setup. Looking at the details of the log entry should help clear up exactly what that is (if you have not already resolved this, since I know it’s been a while…)
LM