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I know there are ongoing questions about firewalls. I have been struggling with CA eTrust EZ Armor Firewall that came free to the users of Roadrunner. While I was looking at Lavasoft’s page for new definitions for Ad-Aware, I noticed they offer a firewall of their own. Do any of our loungers use this or have any experience to share about it?

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I have not tried it but the firewall engine is based on Agnitum Outpost Firewall. It gets a good review at Softpedia

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Wow, they are undercutting Agnitum’s price by $10. What kind of relationship is that?

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Although the functionality might be slightly different, this probably is mostly relevant:

I have been using Outpost Firewall Pro for about 2 years. Its basic functionality is very solid, but you might occasionally be annoyed by the way it presents dialogs to approve changes to various bits and pieces of programs, or outbound connections that a program never made before and which has not been pre-approved. In the recent update, in became simpler to okay outbound connections by giving you a default “rule” (I use the Rules Wizard mode; there is a simpler mode).

After the initial “training,” and except for those monthly changes to Windows, you probably won’t find it too exciting to use. Of the optional extras, I use the one to prompt me on whether I want to download Flash movies from a particular site. (But I don’t use the ad-blocking, attachment quarantine, or content filtering plug-ins.)

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Thanks Jefferson and Tony for your feedback. Believe it or not, I got a call from Roadrunner asking how I like using their services so far. I think I quite surprised the gentleman who called because I politely “griefed” about the firewall that they provided. He walked me through it step by step and we made a few changes. So I guess I’ll keep giving it a chance. In the meantime, I am going to check out Lavasoft’s product a bit more. I may download it to another computer and give it a test drive to see if I can figure it out any easier than the one I currently have.

I have found that I can read help pages until I am blue in the face, but if I don’t understand what the writers are talking about, it just goes right over my head. I can’t be just guessing now with a continual connection to the Internet like I could when I was on dial-up. Not that dial-up is safe by any means, but being disconnected most of the day does have its advantages! I like the broadband however, so my goal is – to be as safe as possible as quickly as possible so I don’t have to worry about “stuff” much!!

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Skitterbug,
I’ve recently set up several computers using the Road Runner CA EZ Armor setup you’re using, and have had problems with the included firewall (ZoneAlarm 5.1) losing program settings. As I remember, ZA 5.1 did have a problem with not remembering settings; the problem was resolved with ZA 5.5, or a version shortly after that one. What I have done recently was to uninstall the CA EZ Armor firewall, and install the new Zone Alarm Pro, version 6.1.737.000. There are no problems with it. You can use your existing CA serial number, since it’s a legitimate ZAP number — even with the CA branding. It should update for a year, although, to be on the safe side, it probably would be a good idea to purchase ZAP from ZoneAlarm and pay the upgrade price. Anyway, it works well, and doesn’t exhibit any of the problems that the branded CA version does. No conflicts, either! Good luck!

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Thanks for the additional information! I appreciate it lots and I’ll certainly check this out!!

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Should you opt to uninstall the CA-branded ZAP in order to install the newest ZoneAlarm Pro, don’t forget that you need to delete the C:WindowsInternet Logs files manually. The new installation will get quite confused if you don’t.

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Hi,

I am getting totally frustrated with CA losing its settings or worse deciding to block apps that I have allowed to access the Internet day after day after day. It does this after being idle during the night or after long stretches of inactivity. The only way I can get on the Internet is a reboot! I’ve been following Al’s thread and it seems that ZA will be a better product to use. So my question – when you deleted CA firewall, did you have to do anything extra or just use the add/remove applet? Also, when you refer to the internet logs, do you mean “BACKUP.RDB”, “IAMDB.RDB” and “ZAlog.txt”? Are there any others in there that I am missing? I haven’t begun any of this, I am just contemplating what I would need to do to make the switch over.

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First, make sure you are not connected to the Internet when you start the process of changing ifrewalls. Then, after you uninstall the CA firewall you can/should delete all the files in the Internet log folder. The .rdb is the ZA database and the others are log files. As was stated, you’ll just confuse the ZA install if there are files in that folder.

Joe

--Joe

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Thanks Joe,

So everything in the Internet Log folder belongs to the firewall? Interesting! Okay, when I get up enough nerve to proceed, I’ll do it! I’ve been known to mess up stuff pretty quickly by getting impatient or in a hurry. I will be sure to turn off the cable modem before starting this process! Thanks for replying!

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Well I’ve finally done the deed and uninstalled the CA firewall and put on the ZA firewall listed in your post. It has a few more features available so I will have to explore it a bit to see if the change is worthwhile. One thing that has been different for me is the license key. ZA does not accept my License Key from the package that my ISP (Roadrunner) offered. I am not sure how you achieved your success in changing the ones that you have. So I have the 30 day trial running for now to see if it is better/easier/or more understandable than the one I had. I’ll be asking questions!! So look out everyone because when it comes to firewalls, I am a plus!

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[indent]

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…ZA does not accept my License Key from the package that my ISP (Roadrunner) offered…

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[/indent] This begs a question about which I think I’ll start a new thread, Skitterbug, to keep from cluttering this one up – whether one needs the ZA Pro version as opposed to their free one. After I write my post, I’ll come back to here and add a link (edit) to cross reference them.

Edited to add: A cross reference to my new thread: post 545,847

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Sorry it didn’t work for you. It worked for me, but I also own ZAP, so the versions may have gotten confused. Anyway, ZAP 6.5 is very stable. Incidentally, I tried to renew my CA EZ Armor this morning, and found that it’s not being updated; they’ve replaced it with CA’s Internet Security Suite, a collection that includes version 5.5 of the firewall, the antivirus, PestPatrol, and an antispam application. So far, the firewall isn’t losing settings. Again, sorry the license thing didn’t work for you; as I said earlier, it worked for me, but possibly because I already own ZoneAlarm Pro, and run it instead of the CA version. My installed license key is for CA, though.

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Not a problem Liberty~ I tried ZA pro trial software for a bit and found it to be almost too scary with its messages. I think what I would like to see in any of these programs is a bit more information about what is really happening in language that an average user (me – that is) could understand. I can use things like Sysinternals to help me figure out whether something should be running or not but it would be oh so nice if the original warning message said more. And yes, I click on the more information which takes me out to the firewall’s site and gives me four tabs to muddle through but sometimes I wish it could just be easier! But that’s me this morning without my first And I am not a programmer so I don’t know what the hassles are concerning warning messages, etc. I should just be happy there is anything around that does stop all the bad stuff!!

Since I rambled a bit, I need to get back on track and say that I did go back to CA eTrust EZArmor a few days ago and do have the suite. So far the settings are holding this time. It is v5.1 however. I just checked CA website and it is asking for ID and password which I don’t have since this came through RR. So it is back to RR to see how I get this updated properly! Thanks for the alert! I may as well have the latest and greatest!

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Hi Skitterbug,
RR should have sent you an email about your download. Did you try logging into the CA site using your RR master password and username? If you originally registered your EZ Armor with CA using that user name & pass, it should work fine. Attached is a screenshot of the CA suite firewall I downloaded yesterday, v. 5.5.
Liberty

Added Later: Perhaps you never did register with CA, since you downloaded the suite directly from RR. In that case, just register it using an email address & username.
Your new userpic is nice, but I miss the b/w picture!

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Hi,

Yes, I tried using an ID and password that I used to request the new download and it didn’t recognize me. Yippee! I just tried another ID, which they did recognize and said I forgot my password, they are sending it as I write! I’ll go see if I can get this accomplished! Thanks!

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Good! I hope you can get the new one. As I said, this (5.5.114) doesn’t seem to be losing settings, unlike the version that was downloadable from RR. In the newest version of the Internet Suite, PestPatrol has been updated so that it no longer thinks that the QuickTime updater is a threat, which is good. In the past, I’d noticed that PestPatrol generated a few false positives; that seems to have been fixed. Incidentally, after installing PP, you will need to open the program and start it manually, but it should run automatically after that, if you set it to run at bootup.

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Just as an addendum:

Don’t forget to add the .wmf extension to the firewall’s blocked email attachments!

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Hi LR,

I’ve added this .wmf extension to my exclusion list and I really appreciated the posted pic for showing how to do this. Makes it simpler to understand. I have tried a few times to update from V5.1 to the Version you show in your post 546,494 as current but I have had no success. I have gone through the update link on the program – logged in – checked the software update page. They had a download listed there but it still ends up being V5.1. I appreciate your alert about the new version and I think it is time for me to send a note to RR to see how to obtain it.

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Hi LR,

I never did hear from RR and the help site for Computer Associates isn’t the best in my estimation but I did finally get my updates by going to their FTP site and finding them for myself. So at least I have the current version now. Thanks for letting me know about the updates. And I remembered to replace the .wmf extension to the firewall’s blocked email attachments after updating the firewall!

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