Replacement for Zone Alarm ?

[OldBob]

My daughter's laptop has been taking up to half an hour to complete start up (desktop boots quickly, but nothing will run for the next 20-30 minutes.) I disabled Zone Alarm (free version) and I now see normal boot times.

She only uses it downstream of a wireless router, which acts as a firewall. Running grc's tests shows it to be fully stealthed (other than port 113) w/o ZA running. I turned on Windows Firewall, but it doesn't slow things down noticeably.

My only concern is that ZA stops programs on the pc from accessing the internet on their own, except with permission. Is there another utility for XP SP2 that provides this feature without all the overhead of ZA?

OldBob

 

[PC eye]

Jetico and Comodo are two freewares that offer far more then the free "limiited" version of Zone Alarm! Another freeware spy remover that seems to add somewhat of a mild firewall as well is called Spyware Terminator. Here that has worked great along with Ad-Aware SE Personal. One catches what the other misses back and forth there. But the two others top ZA by a long shot without the retail overhead.
Comodo is found at http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/ Jetico's home page is seen at http://www.jetico.com/index.htm#/jpfirewall.htm Give them both a try there.