Pinecone, I have known people who just use the built-in Windows firewall, however the downside is it does not monitor outbound traffic. I would like to think that most, but not all, people would agree that a third party firewall that monitors both inbound and outbound traffic is the best way to go. Regardless of how careful some consider themselves to be on the internet there is always that chance of getting infected by malware one way or the other that may try to 'call home' with your personal information. http://netsecurity.about.com/od/firewalls/a/aa081804b.htm "Is there any way to know for sure what I am changing?? " As Luis stated Zone Alarm will present you with a pop-up window letting you know that an application or program wants to access the internet. It will give you the option of 'Yes' or 'No' and list the application that wants access, such as 'Internet Explorer' or whatever programs you have. There is also a 'More info' button in the alert. If the program is one you recognize and use all the time, you can click 'Yes' and select the box 'Remember this info_______' to keep from being bothered with the same request all the time. If it is a program you don't recognize I would click 'No', but not necessarily select 'Remember this info'. If the request keeps coming up and you don't recognize the program and the 'More info' button does not give you the info you need you may want to 'google' and see what it says. There are some 'Windows applications' that need internet access on occasion. Witz

no you do not ever have to give anything server rights. the thing you MUST allow is generic 32 process that is what would stop you from being allowed access. You can open your zone alarm and click on the programs and change allowances or non allowances for each item there, if you did not give something permission that you want to have permission you can just click on the item there in the list and change your permissions, this link shows how to do that. Firewalls and ZoneAlarm Guide and Tips Next I would go download and install firefox browser and try using it and see if you can get it to access, right after you install it the zone alarm will ask if you want to give it server rights say no and to remember that, then it will pop up and ask do you want to allow firefox access to the internet say yes and check mark to remember that. That is all you have to do to have it set up for firefox to access the internet, it will not have to ask you again unless you do an update to your firefox program then it will ask again since the program has changed do the exact same steps as before. Firefox this will allow us to see if your problem lies with IE it self or elsewhere, if firefox works fine you at least have a good browser to use in the meantime. ZoneAlarm firewall - Tutorial read through this set of full tutorials with pictures.

It never bothered me like this before. It messes up my remote connection with my office computer because ZA won't allow you to control it remotely. I do a lot of work from home using the office machine through Go to my PC. It blocks access to my office computer and then I have to drive in and 'allow.' An hour later the same thing happens. I googled the problem and the cure was to shut off automatic updates. Did that, changed it to manual and it didn't stop it. I'm wondering if other firewalls will allow remote control? At home, I do tell it to allow, but it continues to pop up every hour or so. Is it safe to change the ZA setting to 'always allow.' The place where you change the question marks to green checks? I always thought Java was easily hacked. Jane

I posted the link to the other thread for you so that you could go in there and get the link to the actual fixed version of zone alarm, from that thread here is the link that you would have found there. Download and install the latest versions which solve the loss of internet access problem here under that Recommended actions it has the links to every single version of the zone alarm updates if you use the free that would be the basic firewall. If you click on that link there it gives you the actual exe to download. What you were looking at on the site you posted was a trial for the zone alarm security suite NOT the free one, if you just look over to the right on that page there is a button for the basic firewall only UPDATE that is what you would want and when you hit that it gives the exe also.