Beginning information: Windows XP Professional running sp2.

Have been running sp2 w/firewall turned off for several months now, using zonealarm as my firewall.

Everything is fine until midway thru July, when windows xp "takes over" monitoring zonealarm and won't allow anything through. The only way I'm writing this now is that I've turned off ZA, which allows me to connect fine to the internet. I turn back on ZA, and I can work for a total of 5-10 seconds until Windows Security Center realizes that ZA is back on, and takes charge again, shutting down all connectivity. No, I have no idea what changed, because I didn't do any updates from MS, and the only thing I've loaded before or since has been a few games. No spyware found on the pc, no viruses found either.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled ZA, I've tried to take the teeth out of the Security Center both thru settings and thru the registry, and it seems that either I keep ZA and lose sp2, or I keep sp2 and run w/out ZA (and try to configure the Windows firewall.)

Before anyone suggests it, I went straight from clean install of XP to sp2, don't have a version of sp1. Nor do I have a recent restore point that I can go back to, and would prefer to learn how to fix this rather than just reload and hope it doesn't happen again. (just my style) I keep pulling up the task manager to see if there are any new processes starting that I have to get rid of (already been two in 10 minutes). Rather concerned here.

Graaille, here are a few that might help you:

http://www.zonelabs.com/store/conten...id=ts_xpsp2faq

http://www.pcanswers.co.uk/tips/defa...bsectionid=616

http://forum.kvpug.org/viewtopic.php?t=166

http://www.infopackets.com/channels/...ers_part_2.htm

Hope these help

Dude, you the man! That second link, and a page directly off of it made the difference. Still a mystery as to why my version suddenly stopped working w/sp2, but downloaded the new version, went thru the steps for cleaning and uninstalling they had, and then installed the new version -- works like a champ.

Quote: Originally Posted by Graaille Dude, you the man! That second link, and a page directly off of it made the difference. Still a mystery as to why my version suddenly stopped working w/sp2, but downloaded the new version, went thru the steps for cleaning and uninstalling they had, and then installed the new version -- works like a champ.

Good to hear, glad it worked