Prelude76 Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 i just noticed something. i dont remember if ZoneAlarm 2 or 3 did it. I was using ZoneAlarm 4 and have eMule (a P2P program) running, and after about a day or so of being online, Zone alarm 'grows' in memory usage from about 6mb RAM to over 25m RAM, mostly by its VSMON file. and VSMON uses about 30 to 40% CPU cycle. my whole computer just crawls. at firs i thought maybe theres some major hacker activity, but i decided to try something. i loaded Kerio Personal Firewall (looks uglier but does its job). i'm using Kerio 2.15. After about a day of running eMule again, with similar volume of data transfer going in/out, i check and Kerio is only using 4.5 mb RAM and uses 00 to 01% CPU cycle. I never remember ZA2 being such a dog, and ZA3 didnt bother me too much, but on my rig, ZA4 seems to just kill the speed! is that normal? did ZoneAlarm just start sucking from over-bloat?what ram usages do you guys get with your firewalls? anyone use Sygate? how is that one at memory/CPU usage? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SonicDragon Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 I used Zone Alarm on ME and didn't find many problems, but when i upgraded to xp, it did not work right at all. Since then i have been using Sygate. No problems what so ever. I assume ZA has fixed the XP problem by now, but i've never gone back to it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freddy Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 I had the same problem with older versions of ZA and another P2P software. The more activity on the P2P, the slower it computer got. At the time I found that running tools to free up memory 'leaks' worked wonders. Upgrades to both ZA and the P2P improved performance and fixed some of the memory leak issues. I've since stopped using the P2P, but though it worth mentioning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prelude76 Posted July 9, 2003 Author Share Posted July 9, 2003 I had the same problem with older versions of ZA and another P2P software. The more activity on the P2P, the slower it computer got. At the time I found that running tools to free up memory 'leaks' worked wonders. Upgrades to both ZA and the P2P improved performance and fixed some of the memory leak issues. I've since stopped using the P2P, but though it worth mentioning.it is a good point, but... why blame the P2P when its ZoneAlarm doing the leaking? as i mentioned, Kerio firewall solved the 'memory leak', and i'm still using same P2P program.anyone else use Kerio full-time? how does it rate at firewalling compared to Zone Alarm and Sygate? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grasshopper Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 I'm using ZA free v. 3.7 and have been using ZA for over a year now. It's on two XP machines and a 2k machine.I've not had one iota of a problem with it....ever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prelude76 Posted July 9, 2003 Author Share Posted July 9, 2003 I'm using ZA free v. 3.7 and have been using ZA for over a year now. It's on two XP machines and a 2k machine.I've not had one iota of a problem with it....ever.well, same for me. never had a problem with v2 and v3 for years. its this new v4 version that seems to drag everything down.are the older versions still available? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freddy Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 why blame the P2P when its ZoneAlarm doing the leaking?Must be the interaction of ZA with the p2p. All those connections coming and going. Never attributed it to one app or another, but only had the problem with both running over an extended period of time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrainey Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 I had used the free version for a year or so with no problem. Picked up V3 Pro on sale and installed it on my 98SE system. I took forever to load and seemed to slow everything down, so I went back to and have stayed with the freebie. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henderrob Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 I upgraded to ZAPro Early this year and feel now that I would have been better off with the free version. The Privacy settings slow my broadband to 14.4 baud speed so I turned them off. I regularly have IE crashes which I believe are related to ZAPro. I use XP and find I need to log off and on every couple of hours to stabilize XP. I'll use it until it has to be renewed because of my Scottish heritage. If I paid for it, I'm going to use it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prelude76 Posted July 9, 2003 Author Share Posted July 9, 2003 ah forget ZoneAlarm. i let it run overnight on my home computer and it racked up 45mb RAM usage instead of expected 4 to 6mb RAM, plus 77% CPU USAGE! (i have the screen caps of that if you dont believe me )my computer was CRAWLING! so i now uninstall ZoneAlarm and am running Kerio. i like it a lot! it seems to boot a touch faster too. and Kerio is holding steady at 6.5mb RAM and 00% CPU usage. so people, i know i had good luck for quite a long time with Zonealarm, but i just dont have ambition to trouble such a MAJOR memory leak. if you have similar slow-downs, check out Kerio. its free, its ugly, and its fast. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GolfProRM Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 Strange... running ZAPro 4 here and getting only 2.5Mb of memory usage... I really like Zone Alarm, and it hasn't given me a lick of trouble... Even while using my local FTP server...Edit - My computer's been up for 5 days on it's current run now... so the time factor isn't an issue here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prelude76 Posted July 10, 2003 Author Share Posted July 10, 2003 i think Kerio is trying to make a good first impression. first full day of running with a P2P running non-stop, i check, and its memory usage dropped from 6mb original to 1.8mb this morning. i'm puzzled. GolfProRM, what is your VSMON using? ZoneAlarm (zapro.exe) always stays at 2.5mb for me too, but zone alarm uses and launches the VSMON.EXE process as well, and its that file that fluctuates from 6mb at start up to 45mb over a few days. can you check and let me know what yours runs at? i'm just curious to find out why this happened, coz i recently made my brothers and friends and dad all install zonealarm v4, telling them its pretty good. gonna have to go and throw kerio on there while they're not looking, if i notice similar memory leakage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grasshopper Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 I'm not sure I'll go to v.4 then or even upgrade to Pro. I'm kinda cheap.My vsmon file is at about 7 megs right now and I've been up for about 2.5 days without a reboot.tbird Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prelude76 Posted July 10, 2003 Author Share Posted July 10, 2003 I'm not sure I'll go to v.4 then or even upgrade to Pro. I'm kinda cheap.My vsmon file is at about 7 megs right now and I've been up for about 2.5 days without a reboot.tbirdsee, thats about normal, tbird. VSMON *should* stay at 7mb, and zapro at 2.5mb. still, as an ideal situation, thats still 9.5mb usage, compared to 1.8mb for Kerio. but zonealarm has more features too, so thats to be expected. no clue what happened in my case. maybe as Freddy mentioned, it could be ZA incompatiblity with my particular P2P, eMule. or maybe i was getting majorly hacked for these past few days. does anyone still used ZA 2.x series? whats the memory usage on that one? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 does anyone still used ZA 2.x series? whats the memory usage on that one?Prelude, You can't use ZA 2.x in XP; you need to run ZA 3.1 or higher. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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