zone alarm problem?

From: Sally M (Sally24_at_37.com)
Date: 08/27/04 

Date: 27 Aug 2004 13:21:09 -0700

Actually I don't know if it's a problem with ZA or a virus spyware
problem.

I was over at my cousins taking a look at his computer problems and we
installed the new ADAWARE and the new SPYBOT as well as the KASPERSKY
AV TRIAL. We ran them one afte rthe other and found a large number of
problems (hundreds of pieces of adware and numerous worms and trojans)
and got rid og them all. I can't list them as I'm not over at his
place right now. Afterward the machine was working beautifully and for
the first time in months was booting properly.

The problem is when we tried to get onto the net IE just hung and then
crashed (illegal function error) then the whole thing froze solid
forcing a cold boot. Did exactly the same thing second time... this
time we noticed the KASPERSKY icon flash in the bottom of IE before
the illegal function box.

So we had to cold boot again and I uninstalled KASPERSKY and tried
getting onto the net with IE. No illegal function this time but it
just couldn't find a site. So I closed down ZONE ALARM and tried again
and it got on the net no problem. So I checked all the settings and
everything looked OK. Uninstalled and reinstalled ZONE ALARM but the
same problem... completely unable to access the net with ZA running.
By this tinme it was getting late and I had to leave but I don't like
leaving him without a firewall.

Is it possible that one of the worms, trojans or spyware programs
removed is making it impossible to run a firewall?

One thing we removed manually was a P2P program that seemed to be
running in the background all the time but we couldn't find anywhere
in the program selection under STARTUP. We uninstalled it from the
control panel (add remove) but the name was something I'd never heard
of before (something like P2P NETWORKING... it almost looked generic).