Technology Tales

Adventures & experiences in contemporary technology

Onto Norton 360…

20th October 2007

TrueVector Error

ZoneAlarm cut off VMware’s access to the internet so it was time to reinstall it. However, I messed up the reinstallation and now there seems no way to reinstate things like they were without tampering with my Windows XP installation status and I have no intention of doing that. The thing seems to think that it can start a TrueVector service that does not exist.

Since I have to have some security software on board, I made a return to the Symantec fold with my purchase of Norton 360. That does sound extreme but I have been curious about the software for a while now. You get the usual firewall, antivirus and antispam functions with PC tuning, anti-phishing and backup features available as well. It is supposed to be unobtrusive so we’ll see how it goes from here.

Update:

PC Pro rates the software highly while Tech.co.uk accuses it of being bloatware. Nevertheless, the only issue that I am having with it is its insistence on having Microsoft Update turned on. For now, I am sticking with Shavlik’s NetChk Protect, especially seeing what Microsoft has been doing with its update service. Take a look at Windows Secrets.com to see what I mean. Other than that, it seems to working away in the background without intruding at all.

Turning those ads off…

2nd October 2007

I had a recent problem with InternetNews.com: its adverts were causing Firefox to lock up my CPU. While I do put my CPU through its paces, I’d rather that others didn’t decide to do the same and with things that do not add a great deal of value. So it was time to set ZoneAlarm loose by cranking up its ad blocking to the max. There are occasions where exceptions are needed and right-clicking on a domain name in the site list in the Privacy area allows you to relax things on a site by site basis. Obviously, you need to know the website well but I don’t ever remember having this sort of control with Norton Personal Firewall when I had it on my main PC.

New version of ZoneAlarm Security Suite

1st April 2007

Having been an owner 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 middle of my Office 2007 installation activities, the notification duly turned and I downloaded and installed 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 Kapersky anti-virus 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 of 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 learning from 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 anti-virus functionality. This took an update and a reboot to sort out and I 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 anti-virus software is far from ideal. Other than that, everything is working fine and the firewall is staying silent as it continues to learn.

WordPress security alert

3rd March 2007

Apparently, a cracker got on to the WordPress.org servers and tampered with the publicly available stable versions of WordPress. 2.1.1 is the affected version and they are imploring everyone to upgrade to 2.1.2. It all sounds worrying but I suppose that it highlights the need to keep your guard up and even names as big as WordPress can be hit. I don’t think that WordPress.com is affected.

VMware and ZoneAlarm

30th January 2007

Contrary to appearances given by this blog, I am not exclusively a Windows user. In fact, I have sampled Linux on a number of occasions in the past and I use VMware to host a number of different distributions – my Ubuntu installation is updating itself as I write this – as I like to keep tabs on what is out there. I also retain a Windows 2000 installation for testing and have had virtual machine hosting a test release of Vista not so long ago. I also have my finger in the UNIX world with an instance of OpenSolaris, though it is currently off my system thanks to my wrecking its graphics set up. However, ZoneAlarm has been known to get ahead of itself and start blocking VMware. If you go taking a look on the web, there is no solution to this beyond a complete system refresh (format the boot drive and reinstall everything again) and I must admit that this sounds like throwing out bath, baby and bathwater together. I did find another approach though: removing ZoneAlarm and reinstalling it. This wipes all its remembered settings, including the nefarious one that conflicted with VMware in the first place. It’s amazing that no one else has considered this but it has worked for me and having to have the security software relearn everything again is much less painless than rebuilding your system.

PSU shorting: one adventure too far…

20th January 2007

This morning, I got up to find my main computer powered off after I left it on overnight for a spyware scan by Webroot Spy Sweeper. After satisfying myself that it was dead, I tried popping a new fuse in the plug. What I saw next was far from being a pretty sight: shorting in the PSU. The fact that it took out a new 5 A fuse was neither here nor there (they are 20p a piece at where I replenished my supply: they may be cheaper elsewhere but what’s 20p these days?); thoughts of fried PC hardware are far from pleasant, especially the vision of losing data and expensive software purchases because a hard drive got fried by a shorting PSU. A whole new bare bones system from the likes of Novatech were appearing very ominously in my horizon.

There was only one thing for it: try another PSU and see if everything works. So, it was off to a nearby branch of PC World for a replacement. I know that there were other options but I preferred to get this problem sorted out pronto to put my mind at ease, if at all possible. The old PSU got taken out and the new one plugged in as part of pre-installation testing. Thankfully, I saw the Windows start up screen and the omens were good; it later turned out that my data were safe too. Initial problems with keyboard and mouse recognition were resolved by a reboot, as was an IP address conflict that had resulted because my back up machine was on throughout all of this. All in all, things turned out well after a solid lesson in backing up data outside of the PC on which it resides. Maybe an online service such as Diino could be very useful.

I do seem to have an issue with PSU’s giving up the ghost; maybe its the fact that I run them overnight a lot. This incident caused to upgrade from 450 W Jeantech unit to a 500 W one. The PSU that I had before the 450 W unit was higher rated but it couldn’t cope with the power demands of the machine it was powering up. The result was that it cut out a lot on start up, an annoying habit that I tolerated for longer than I really should. I’ll keeping an eye on things as I go…

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