ZoneAlarm Free seems to be incompatible with Webshield component of Avast Anti-v

[Happy-Dude]

Heya sgolux.

Have you tried also disabling Zonealarm also (you didn't seem to mention this possibility)? It may not only be a one-program thing (it may be both).

Also, this may or may not have anything to do with your system, did you check out the redirection settings in your browser (though I feel that refreshing should still do the job ...)? Sometimes, things aren't configured right ... Are you behind a router/modem with a firewall and is your connection alright ? (yeah ... I know ... Might be obvious, but, from almost a week of calling Verizon for tech support for different problems each day, they had stupid, yet very simple solutions for it. P.S.-wasn't my fault.) Do you have any browser add-ons or any other security software?

Just check up on some stuff again. Settings, other programs, hardware, connection, and etc. Hey, you never know ... Besides, hows the latest Avast! beta working with Zonealarm and the Web Shield? Have you tried installing an outdated version of Zonealarm to see if stuff works right?

Just my two cents !!

[DavidR]

I think Rick-F is an avast forum member so I would sort of expect him to stick up for avast

FYI the Outpost Firewall forum is also a User Forum and they seem no better educated in the ways of avast. The OP 2008 version insists that you disable one of the avast drivers, which makes the network shield redundant.

It took our input and one of the Alwil team to show them that a) the fix they suggested a registry edit would promptly be corrected by avast on an update, b) with avast 4.8 the self-defence might also kick in and c) how to do it correctly by uninstalling the network shield.

Eventually Agnitum contacted Alwil and will be bring out a fix so Outpost works with avast rather than have avast users disable elements of avast. When that happens I can upgrade my version of outpost.

So ZA aren't alone in their lack of knowledge of avast, you would have thought that they would have communicated with Alwil to resolve the problem, but it took them months to even decide the problem was on their side.

[sgolux]

Happy-Dude - thanks for your thoughts.

I went through a long and involved debugging session disabling and re-enabling all sorts of things.  And yes, I can disable ZoneAlarm, and things work fine.  Or I can disable websheild and things work fine.  I am making a judgement call at the moment that given the choice between a real firewall and the services that webshield provides, I prefer the firewall... but of course I would rather have both.  The Beta did not fix the problem.  I don't have the option of running an older version of zonealarm, as the version I am running is the only one to function under Vista SP1.

Thanks for the 2cents though.

Again, my interest is in just getting ALWIL and ZoneLabs to talk to each other.  ZoneLabs is harder to get to, as they are part of the much larger Check Point Software, and as a user of their free software, I (perhaps reasonably enough) have no direct route to their tech support.  I can only post on their user forum and hope that something filters up to the company.  ALWIL seems to monitor this forum more directly.

I don't know who's "fault" this is, and quite frankly, I don't need to point fingers.  It would be sweet to get these two good pieces of software working copacetically though.

[Lisandro]

I can disable ZoneAlarm, and things work fine.  Or I can disable websheild and things work fine.
The Beta did not fix the problem.

Can you try if the latest beta version solves this?
Download the updater (http://files.avast.com/files/beta/aswbeta.exe) and run it or go here for more information.

I am making a judgement call at the moment that given the choice between a real firewall and the services that webshield provides, I prefer the firewall...

It's not a preference... you need a firewall as WebShield is NOT a firewall. Otherwise, ZA can't offer the protection that WebShield offers.

Again, my interest is in just getting ALWIL and ZoneLabs to talk to each other.  ZoneLabs is harder to get to

This happened in the past... Alwil stayed waiting for ZA for months to correct problems on ZA... Hope this time things get different.

Maybe the problem is on how ZA works on Vista.
I have similar 'conflicts' with Comodo at Vista.
PCTools firewall is running fine for me.

[sgolux]

Tech Asked:  "Can you try if the latest beta version solves this?  Download the updater (http://files.avast.com/files/beta/aswbeta.exe) and run it or go here for more information."

I downloaded and installed the beta yesterday (April 29) from that location.  The version number is 4.8.1187.  It did not solve my particular problem.  Is there a newer beta now available?

[DavidR]

That is the latest beta build you have.

[Rick F]

Rick-F (on the zonealarm forum) wrote:  "FYI... The 'webshield' of 'a v a s t'  is not firewall like.  'Webshield' scans for viruses as the page is downloading.  It's just extra protection and works very well with older versions of ZA.  I'm still running ZA - 7.0.302.000."

That was me   

I was reading this thread with interest and when I saw the link to the discussion of this problem on ZA's forum and read it -- I couldn't let miss-truth like that pass. I also use ZA... but it's a bit older (see sig line below).

[Lisandro]

I downloaded and installed the beta yesterday (April 29) from that location.  The version number is 4.8.1187.  It did not solve my particular problem.  Is there a newer beta now available?

No... sad news...
I would like to see any acknowledgment from Alwil or Zonelabs that a problem exists...

[sgolux]

Just to keep stuff up to date here....

I have been trying a number of things suggested to me on the ZoneLabs forum, including giving trusted server rights to the avast program, and to all browsers, but it doesn't seem to change the behavior much.

I must say, as much as I like avast, I suspect that the problem is on the avast side.  My reason for this is that I notice the following behavior:

1.  With a clean boot, running ONLY avast and Zonealarm, and no other non-microsoft services, after a period of moderate web surfing, the browser will hang.

2.  If I terminate the avast web shield, I don't even have to restart the browser.  I can just press the reload button, and everything works fine.

3.  If I try to re-start the web shield, it won't fully restart.  It will go into a state where it says "The Provider is waiting for a subsystem to start".

4.  If, when the browser hangs, instead of terminating Avast, I terminate ZoneAlarm, the problem does not go away until I reboot.

[Rick F]

Just to keep stuff up to date here....

I have been trying a number of things suggested to me on the ZoneLabs forum, including giving trusted server rights to the avast program, and to all browsers, but it doesn't seem to change the behavior much.

I must say, as much as I like avast, I suspect that the problem is on the avast side.  My reason for this is that I notice the following behavior:

1.  With a clean boot, running ONLY avast and Zonealarm, and no other non-microsoft services, after a period of moderate web surfing, the browser will hang.

2.  If I terminate the avast web shield, I don't even have to restart the browser.  I can just press the reload button, and everything works fine.

3.  If I try to re-start the web shield, it won't fully restart.  It will go into a state where it says "The Provider is waiting for a subsystem to start".

4.  If, when the browser hangs, instead of terminating Avast, I terminate ZoneAlarm, the problem does not go away until I reboot.

sgolux,

Just curious... did avast version 4.7 work for you with 'webshield' activated and ZoneAlarm? I looked back on your earlier posts and couldn't find any mention of prior version working for you.

[sgolux]

I have used ZoneAlarm for years.  One year ago I upgraded from XP to Vista.  On my XP machine, I was running Norton, and I kept hating it more and more, so when I moved to the Vista machine, I swore not to use that junk any more.  That is when I upgraded to Avast.  At the same time, zonealarm did not yet work properly on vista.  In fact, very few firewalls did for quite some time.  So I used a clunky hardware firewall that isn't very good on my router, and used Avast on my Vista machine, which left me with only the windows firewall when I was traveling, which is not a great feeling.  Then, finally, zonealarm came out with a version of their firewall (the current one) that actually works on Vista, after Vista is upgraded to SP1.  So I did that upgrade, and that is when I have seen the conflict of webshield with zonealarm.

On my old XP machine, I did have a web scanner that was part of my norton package (I forget exactly what it was called) and that worked with my zonealarm back in those days with no problem.

[alanrf]

Rick F & sgolux,

I have not made the switch to Vista (since I see no compelling improvement to do so).

However, I am wondering if your participation in the ZoneAlarm forums gives you any indication that this appears to be a problem restricted to the users of both products under Vista or is it a problem thought to appear also in XP. 

I gave up the increasingly problematic ZoneAlarm some time ago in favor of just the good old Windows XP Firewall and my hardware router (a Linux based Linksys product running third party firmware).  Before I get any lectures I made the choice deliberately, I had not experienced any virus infection since starting to use avast (4 years ago) that was not deliberately inserted by me and that remains true to this instant.

However, if there is any value at all in me installing and running the latest ZoneAlarm along with the latest version of avast in my Windows XP SP2 system I will be happy to do so (I have sufficient layers of recovery available).

If this is thought to be an issue only for Vista users I will not waste the effort.  Please let me know.

[sgolux]

As stated above, I have no personal experience of running avast under XP.  I also had no problems with zonealarm under XP.

However, if you have a sufficiently powerful firewall running in your router, I see no reason to run zonealarm or any other software firewall on your PC.  Of course "sufficiently powerful" is an interesting concept here and must give with your own gut and needs.  I like zonealarm because it deals with both incoming packets (also dealt with by the windows firewall on both XP and VISTA) but also filters outgoing packets, which allows one to (possibly) avert the problems of a trojan horse.  Some hardware based firewalls can also do this, although (of course) they must do it on a protocol level, rather than a program level, so typically the setup is more complex.

Then there is the issue of whether you travel with your computer.  I travel extensively with mine, so I really need something on my computer itself, as I join various and sundry foreign LANs for access to the broader internet.

Hope this helps.

[Lisandro]

which left me with only the windows firewall when I was traveling, which is not a great feeling.

Both XP and Vista offer very good inbound protection. No problems.
XP does not offer outbound. Vista has an 'advanced' tool to configure (not very friendly).

I gave up the increasingly problematic ZoneAlarm some time ago in favor of just the good old Windows XP Firewall

I gave up in favor of Comodo and then PCTools (on Vista).

I'm missing this...

I would like to see any acknowledgment from Alwil or Zonelabs that a problem exists...

[Sesame]

I'm missing this...

I would like to see any acknowledgment from Alwil or Zonelabs that a problem exists...

I think sgolux referred this comment by igor.

Well, I'll put it this way:
- I know there were some issues between avast! and ZoneAlarm Pro privacy blocking (or what's the feature name). It's been caused by bugs in ZoneAlarm and was an issue for quite some time. I really don't know if it affects current versions as well - as the developers can't do anything about it on avast!'s side.

- Your symptoms seem to be different - so, it may be a new issue in avast! 4.8. If this is the case, then I'd say there's a good chance to be fixed (as the problem would probably be in the new part of the code... or "close").

Here is a similar problem that seems to have been fixed yesteday (already included in the latest beta):
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=34806.0
However, it's really hard to say for sure if it's the same... so, it would be useful to confirm that the fix really works (or find out that it doesn't, and then the search for the solution would continue).

The thing is that the described problems are not very common - if the problem appeared on every computer running the same OS and firewall, then it would be easy (to simulate in our lab and fix). However, I'd say that most issues in 4.8 have been fixed - and now we're receiving one or two reports of a problem, from the user base of 50 millions - i.e. something pretty specific for a particular configuration.