Last night, after almost two hours of remove this, change that, reboot, etc., the Tech finally asked THE question. "Do you use a software firewall?" "Yes, I use Zone Alarm " was my reply. Of course, most of you know what he said next. "Well, there's your problem and there's nothing more I can do if you don't remove it." He had no answer when I told him I'd been using ZA for better than two years and it was there when they did the installation and their installer didn't have a problem with it. I have cable and they supply the modem. He never even suggested that might be the culprit or offer to send someone to check it. I was really annoyed! I shut the computer down, fixed myself a drink and watched the late news to get away from it and calm down.

An hour of so later, I turned the computer back on and proceeded to run scandisk, defrag, NAV and Ad-aware. None of these things indicated any problem. Then, I removed all the "changes", putting everything back like it was originally. After re-booting; lo and behold, my internet connection worked again WITH Zone Alarm running! I don't know if anything I did helped, if the computer was overheated, or just one of those "nature of the beast" things. What I do know is, PC911 wise ones are right; Zone Alarm does NOT cause problems.

The point of this ranting is; if you have to make a choice between tech support and PC911 advice, go with the PC911 advice. Without this forum, I would have blindly followed the Tech's advice and been vulnerable without Zone Alarm. PC911 rules!!

Thank you, again and again and again!

Copper

Well said Copper and a scenario I have been through no less than five times.

windows is strange, not matter what flavour. so are the tech support sections of some ISPs.

Does your ISP have a seperate page listing the problems they are having and keep that updated on regular intervals? If so, you may have a look there. If not, I suspect the fault wasn't at your end at all...

_________
Do not assume anything

They usually have a recorded message detailing outage areas. Also, this was a level 2 tech. You'd think he would know about problems at their end. Who knows!! I'll just stick with PC911 advice when I have a choice.

Copper

Thanks for letting me know I'm not the only one!

Copper

To me it's simple:

There are a hell of a lot more people up here that have the qualifications to make more than any 10-$15 per hour and don't have to look it up on screens to give you the answer!

my 2 cents..

Kenny

Kenny
Stone Mountain,GA

Spezi, You've been through it FIVE times! Did you not learn anything after the 2nd,3rd 4th or FIFTH times? }>

First with AT&T@Home and now with Mediacom, if you call in, and they find out that you have ZA on, they want you to un-install it.

Never mind that it is not the problem. They just think it is the problem. I have come to believe that if they can't find the existing problem, they try to make a mountain out of a molehill.

Some of the techies are getting better. By this, I mean, they recognize that ZA will run on your PC with no harm done to your setup. But there are still a lot of them that don't know any different.

One of the things that I have done in the past, is just shut ZA down, and tell them that I uninstalled it. Then after the problem is solved, I turn it back on. Works for me!

I may have mentioned it before but I use a small ISP in my town (Mackay Qld Aust.) They took great pains to explain to me about Zonealarm,they even reccommend it on their web pages. The Guy was overjoyed when i told him that i already have it. No $10 an hour techies with this mob they are all family members.

Kenny, I agree. Best forum discovery I ever made is PC911.

Hauxfan, Thanks for the tip. I'll remember to shut down ZA if there is a next time.

Woodsie, This is a nation wide cable company. I'm seriously considering changing. Need to find one that knows what they're doing.

Copper

Unfortunately nationwide or not the ISP's tech people seem to have been trained all at the same place ergo they all have the same approach from what I've seen. Guess all I'm saying is there is no guarantee that switching will make their dislike of Anti Virus and firewall software go away.

I did switch once from ADSL to cable and the advice is almost word for word the same when problems arise and they have always been at the ISP end in my case.

Woodsie - whats their fone #?
Sounds like we should all call!

Click. Crunch. Join. Feel Good.

Normally, many of the probes that ZA blocks are from your own ISP, perhaps that is why they don't like it?

Shelly

Sounds like a good reason to me, Shelly.

I've had this cable service since November 2001 and their email downtime is a bit much. Down numerous times for several hours, but once it was down for 4-5 days.

Also, I frequently have to disconnect my router and modem, shut down the computers, then reconnect everything and boot up again. I just do this myself because when I call tech support that's the drill. I can do that without waiting on the phone for a tech to walk me through it.

Has anyone heard anything, good or bad about 1-55?

It is a Hammond, La. based corporation that provides Internet services throughout Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. It's been recommended to me by a friend who says his father uses it and is well satisfied. Friend has no first hand knowledge, he lives in Houston. My husband is getting tired of my complaining, but I don't want to jump too quickly and go from the pan to the fire. I want to do my homework on this one. There isn't much on dslreports, the ratings look good, but there are only two reviews and they're rather dated.

In my rant I said "always go with PC911 advice", so I'd appreciate any input.

Thanks,

Copper

If you have Time Warner locally, they now offer Earthlink Broadband. I orginally had Road Runner and was very pleased with it. To go with Earthlink, I just called and told them I wanted to change to Earthlink since I was already using a dialup as backup. No one came out as it is still service by the same people. The benefit I got was not only is it the same people servicing but I also got a dialup for free in case some fool cuts the cable line looking for gold or something and it is about $5.00 cheaper per month. Also have free 10MB web site and 8 e-mails.

From your description of the service you have been getting, I would sure be looking to change providers!

Shelly

Shelly, I'm definately looking to change, but I want this one to work. That's why the opinion request about I-55.

Sonny, it's not Time Warner, the current provider is Charter Pipeline.

Copper

I'm definately looking to change

That's why I suggested Earthlink through Time Warner.

Thanks for the tip, Sonny, but I checked and that's not available.

Copper

>> First with AT&T@Home and now with Mediacom, if you call in, and they find out that you have ZA on, they want you to un-install it. <<

Zone Alarm questions come up quite often with ISP's, even from qualified techs, because it's quite often not configured correctly by new ZA users (and it's a very commonly used firewal). This doesn't apply, of course, to PC911 folks... but, as often as they get inquiries from unknowledgeable ZA users, support techs tend to make unwarranted assumptions. A lot of new ZA users don't know how to configure for DHCP servers and such things when they run high internet security settings with some ISP's. There are other circumstances where some of the 'ton of info' (that many people don't read) on the ZA site can be very useful. Between the unqualified support techs, and the qualified ones having had many problems with unknowledgeable (not PC911) users... ZA is sometimes a bit of a 'buzz word'.

Take care... Randell

There is a Charter forum on DSRL: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/charter

Registration is not required, but I suggest that you register and read through a few threads before posting.

Don't know about that forum, but in the SWBell forum on DSLR, actual technical support folks do post to help users.

marti

Hi Marti,

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Copper

If you are losing connection with ZA you may need to do this:

http://charterpipelinentx.net/zarenewip.htm

http://charterpipelinentx.net/

Stan Gunn

Thank you, Stan.

Copper

You know Copper, sometimes when things just magically start working again, it turns out to have been a problem on the remote end. It could even be DHCP related... I had a lot of problems with that in the short time that I had cable in Toronto. The real tech I once got to speak to explained it all to me and he explained that if for whatever reason, if I was unable to respond to their DHCP server (e.g. unreachable), the remote network would just disconnect and ignore me. (even though DHCP always assigned the same IP to me) When this happened, it could be three hours before I'd be back online again. This was rogers@home cable. No amount of release/renew was effective until something was reset on the remote end.

If the problem occurs again, do investigate Zone Alarm if for no other reason than to prove yourself right.

From the point of view of a tech trying to help a user remotely, Zone Alarm can be an obstacle. I've installed zone alarm for a few of my customers, and on subsequent visits saw that it was doing them absolutely no good at all because they don't understand it. I nearly felt nauseous when one person said to me "I don't know what any of this shit is, so I just allow it". Every single time he got an alert, he was permanently and without question allowing them. Arggh.

Grogan

Hi Grogan,

Appreciate the advice. I'll save your post so I can remember all of that should the problem occur again.

Also, my heart jumped for joy when I saw your post. Thank you for being here!! I meant what I said in that VERRRY long thread. I love you man, and you can have my "Bud."

Thanks for your help in the past, present and the future!

Copper