• Quickies – December 28, 2006

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    December 29th, 2006HARTHmmmm Things, Quickies

    * Zone Alarm Rant and Woes

    Alternative Title

    * Zone Alarm Rave!

    The last straw with my old Norton Antivirus, Professional Edition .. was when I purchased a Wireless G Broadband Router so my laptop could access the internet and my network of a few computers back during Christmas 2004. What used to be on a renewal subscription term May to May was overridden by the installation of my new Norton Internet Security, and it took until the the end of 2005 to convince them why my recent renewal in May expires in December! I was glad when my DSL telephone company informed me that up to 3 unique installations of Zone Alarm suite was free for the taking. So I took it .. Norton just rebated me the difference.

    I started with version 6.1.737 … and I remember thinking that I was going to train my computer and network perfectly .. and thoroughly understood what I would allow, or deny when the popup came around. I was quite disappointed when I got that notice that there was an update available .. 6.1.744 .. and immediately updated (it was April) – and was horrified that it overwrote everything. All my settings were gone. I had to start all over again, and in the middle of my busiest season. I probably just clicked the “allow” just to get that freakin’ popout off of my system.

    Everything was working great .. but, I received an email (or was it a message in a forum that I saw?) suggesting that there was an issue with Eudora and Zone Alarm .. and everybody should upgrade to the latest version 6.5.722 this past summer. I made sure that my ISP reminded me the secret technique to upgrade Zone Alarm so that 100% of previous settings are NOT overwritten (hint: Ask them – there IS a way!) .. and I upgraded.

    Meanwhile – my computer system has never been worse since. I have no space left .. and I never delete any emails, except maybe 2-3 times a year I empty the trash. I’m getting around 600-800 emails a day .. so .. whenever my system hangs up on me – I always thought that it was a caching problem. And, it is a problem, because once my email freezes or starts to hang up – so does everything else. I have to wait forever if I’m successful in trying to save something. It’s been faster to just turn unplug everything and reboot. I figure enough was enough. So, I did some research last night to figure out what is really happening with my system.

    * Dumprep.exe and CPU usage 100%

    It seems that although it looked like my Eudora was crashing .. it was really just being part of everything else on my computer and hanging up (except it always seemed more aggrevating because I have it checking for new mail every few minutes). What is was .. is that my CPU usage was at 100% .. mostly because of dumprep.exe files using up 100% of my CPU usage. Most of the time, there might be two or three instances of that file .. like 37% and 41% and 22% or something like that. And, whenever I did research – Zone Alarm was always associated.

    So, I browsed the forums and instantly noticed … that there is a NEW BETA VERSION 7.0.279 … and downloaded and installed it.

    Besides the fact that I’ve been running spyware and antivirus scans daily or more (thinking that might stop the lag) .. this new version found 46 new things that I never noticed before. Also, my computer has been running with Eudora up and working perfectly, checking emails every 2 minutes .. and .. I have not rebooted since I installed this update this morning (Thursday Morning 28th) and my CPU usage has been ranging between 4% and 7%.

    OMG – it’s like the greatest invention since sliced bread, because – literally – My computer is finally a new machine tonight. It’s fast. It seems stable .. and there’s even a different Zone Alarm learning ability that makes the popups – less. It’s like night and day for me. I’m glad I figured this out. I was almost ready to think of an alternative to my long time favorite Eudora program.

    IF your are experiencing dumprep.exe and CPU 100% usage – and are using Zone Alarm … check out the beta version. What have you got to lose? Except Lag time.

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