Technology Tales

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TOPIC: KASPERSKY LAB

Some things don't mix...

10th May 2009

Now that the Release Candidate for Windows 7 is out, I have been giving it a whirl in a VirtualBox session and it, like the Beta that I had been trying too, feels a sold enough affair. I went for the complete installation route in place of the upgrade path. I was surprised to find that it bundled my old files into a single folder called Windows_old and that my old user bits and bobs were folded in with this too. There was nothing there that I wouldn't have missed, but this is a nice touch.

However, I have a spot of fixing to do after adding Kaspersky Internet Security 2009. Like the beta, mixing Windows 7 and Kaspersky seems not to be the way to a stable system. Whether this is down to the virtualisation aspect of the business is something that I don't know, but I have found that removing Kaspersky and replacing it made everything sing along together. Booting into Safe Mode and using msconfig to remove any incidences of Kaspersky being called at start up provides a partial restoration of service. Because the msiexec service isn't running, you need full mode before any software but pulling out any cause for execution of Kaspersky gets that back. I suppose that I could go and put Windows 7 on a real machine to see if Kaspersky causes problems there, but that's not a road that I really want to travel.

New version of ZoneAlarm Security Suite

1st April 2007

Having owned a licence of ZoneAlarm Security Suite 6, I was wondering if I would get a pop-up inviting me to upgrade, free gratis as I have a subscription, to the latest version. In the middle of my Office 2007 installation activities, the notification duly turned up to prompt me to download and install the update to version 7.

The first change you will notice is in the branding, ZoneAlarm is now owned by Check Point Software Technologies, but the real reason for my interest is my hearing that Kaspersky antivirus technology is now part of the package. In addition, learning capabilities have also been added so that you don’t get annoyed by the thing asking you if it is alright for a certain application to do something or other that seems vaguely out of order, all the time. This has been part of Norton Internet Security for a while and is certainly an asset; Windows Vista’s User Access Control feature would do well to implement some of this learning, given what I have heard of its activities. And ZoneAlarm 6 was prone to nag you a lot as well, at least it did for me.

The installation went well for me, apart from the non-activation of the antivirus functionality. This took an update and a reboot to sort out, leaving me to think that it might have emanated from the changeover to British Summer Time that took place last weekend. I shall be keeping an eye out for what happens when the changeover to Winter time takes place (don’t worry, I fully plan to enjoy the intervening time; I have more than learned to enjoy each season for its delights). Having a time changeover like this knock out your antivirus software is far from ideal. Other than that, everything is working fine, especially as the firewall is staying silent as it continues to learn.

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