Number 275 - April 2006

ZoneAlarm Blocks My Wireless Network Connection
by Carl Tenning, Tacoma Open Group for Microcomputers
I have an old computer running Windows ME that I wanted to add to my wireless network. The computer already had ZoneAlarm firewall installed. So after purchasing a NETGEAR Wireless USB device, I installed the new device driver. Everything went alright and ZoneAlarm accepted the new connection.    Some time later, however, I had to reload Windows ME for other reasons. In this instance, I loaded the wireless networking device driver before loading ZoneAlarm, in order to quickly	download the Windows updates from Microsoft. But then, after installing ZoneAlarm it blocked my internet access. Then, remembering that I had a working configuration when the wireless device driver was loaded after ZoneAlarm, I uninstalled the wireless device driver, rebooted, and re-installed the wireless device driver. What do you know, it worked! ZoneAlarm no longer blocked the internet access through the wireless device. Apparently when ZoneAlarm was installed over the wireless device driver, it didn't recognize the device. Installing the wireless device driver on top of ZoneAlarm solved the problem.
Number 275 - April 2006