Zone Alarm

My slow dial-up connection is holding me prisoner tonight. I started a download of the Zone Alarm Firewall at 8:00 this evening and it is now 12:30. I am very sleepy but I cannot go to bed and leave the connection open all night. I thought about setting my alarm to get up and shut the computer down when the download is complete but I know that I would just keep hitting the snooze button.

My download is 79% done right now and I wouldn't have to even do this download if it weren't for either a Microsoft Update or an AVG Update that killed my internet connection. This same thing happened to me back in July with a Microsoft Update and I got it fixed somehow. This time I couldn't fix it without totally uninstalling Zone Alarm.

I may be wasting my time anyway because I may install this new Zone Alarm Firewall and lose my connection again. Microsoft or AVG is doing something that makes Zone Alarm have a nervous breakdown or something. I am going to shut off the Automatic Updates from Microsoft, but since I got an update from AVG at the same time, I can't say for sure who the culprit is. I don't have time to figure out how to fix their messes in either case.

Good Morning! I ended up going to bed and setting my alarm, I finally woke up enough to disconnect the connection after hitting the snooze button around five times. I am going to do some more research on my computer problem before reinstalling my new copy of Zone Alarm. I will try to find out if there is a fix or if the offending update has issued a patch for the problem.

Microsoft Update

I have my computer set to do automatic Microsoft or Windows Updates. On Wednesday an update finally got itself downloaded with my slow dial-up connection. So Wednesday evening it asked me if the updates could install themselves. I allowed the installation right before I went to bed along with the shut-down and restart process.

The next morning when my Husband got up, he kept dialing up and trying to go somewhere, anywhere and it behaved as if the browser wasn't receiving an answer from the internet. He was online but all of the web was blocked. He tried redialing several times but always got the same response.

So he woke me up and explained the problem, I thought maybe the update had disabled my Firefox browser. I opened up Internet Explorer and got online with it and had the same results.

I decided to use the handy dandy system restore feature. I clicked START then HELP AND SUPPORT then chose SYSTEM RESTORE. It let me choose not only the date to restore to but also the time. I choose the time when the update had installed itself, just to make sure that the update was the problem. Sure enough that was the problem. I got online and all was well with the world again.

The update returned and I let it install itself again, sure enough the same problem occurred. I did the time machine thing again and shut off the automatic Microsoft Updates. Then I got online to see if anyone else was experiencing this same problem and couldn't find anything. Maybe they just haven't been able to get online to complain yet.