ZoneAlarm’d

I’ve been using ZoneAlarm, the free version of Zone Lab’s firewall, since version 3.x and I’ve rarely had reason to complain. Oh, I’ve complained but I’ve rarely had a good reason for doing so.

Since upgrading to the latest version, 6.5.731, however, I have had a serious problem. I’ve thrice had the firewall’s TrueVector service shut down on me (a Windows message informed me it had to shut down and was dreadfully sorry about the inconvenience) while uTorrent was active.

This was heart-stopping since it meant my poor old PC was defenceless against intruders. Why, someone could gain access to my PC and, I don’t know, dump high-quality pornography featuring beautiful uninhibited women on my harddisk or something. That would be horrible, just horrible.

I should clarify that the only times these TrueVector crashes occur are when I’m using uTorrent. Users of uTorrent and other BitTorrent clients have reported similar problems but these reports aren’t that widespread so troubleshooting is a bit difficult.

I’ve done some testing on my own and limiting the number of connections for torrents in uTorrent to 100 seems to prevent the problem from occurring.

(I also enable ZoneAlarm’s Game Mode — right-click on the ZoneAlarm icon in the system tray — and set it to “Automatic Deny” to prevent any other program from gaining Net access while uTorrent is downloading/upgrading. This shouldn’t make a difference but what the hell.)

Since doing this, I haven’t had any TrueVector crashes in over 20 hours of using uTorrent but I’ll admit it might be a little too early to tell if this workaround actually works. I’ll just have to monitor my harddisk regularly for hiqh-quality pornography, I guess.

It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it.

Update 24/8 I’ve had one TrueVector crash since limiting the number of connections. I’m going to disable uTorrent’s DHT feature and see if that helps.