Zone Alarm

[Warlady]

What is it? Do I need it? And is it on my new computer? How do I find out if it is?

[nosferatuscoffin]

First thing to check is to see what is already installed on your PC. Since Windows and the other software was pre-installed, I can bet dollars to dounts it has either Norton or McAfee already installed. Most likely Norton.

A quick way to check would be either to go to Start/Programs and see if either Norton or McAfee is listed or go to Control Panel and double-click Add/Remove programs and see either one of them is listed there.

If either one is listed, check to see if there is an entry that says something like "Norton Firewall" or "McAfee Firewall".

If neither one is listed, chances are you do not have an anti-virus or firewall listed and I would recommend downloading the EZ-Armor Suite. Let me know the results of the above before we go any farther.

[Warlady]

I have Norton but I dont' want to use that one. I prefer McAfee. On my old Gateway I had McAfee installed and through aol they did updates for a $2.95 a month fee. I'm going to be giving up AOL here shortly so I'm going to give that up. But I don't care for Norton so I'm going to have to decide what to use. I still don't know what Zone Alarm is.

[nosferatuscoffin]

McAfee is generally even worse than Norton as it has a very bad habit of missing a lot of viruses and is genrerally even more unstable then Norton.

What I would suggest is to:

Go to Computer Associates site and download the EZ-Armor Suite. The suite includes the E-Trust anti-virus tool, which I have found to be the best one out there in real-world usage. It offers free, daily updates (as many as 5 per day). It also comes with the ZoneAlarm firewall. And since the first year of usage for it is free, you have nothing to lose. If you do not like it, just uninstall it and put in a different AV and firewall tool.

You can download the free 1 year version of the EZ-Armor suite here (http://www.my-etrust.com/microsoft/).

Note: It is very important to uninstall Norton before you install EZ-Armor (or any other anti-virus program) as two AV's should never be installed on the same PC. Under Start/Programs, there should be an uninstall Norton option.

AS for ZoneAlarm itself, it is a softare firewall. Essentially it acts as a shield against unauthorized intrusions on your PC. Things such as robots scanning your PC's ports, hackers trying to gain access to your system, as well as guarding against such worms such as Blaster or Sasser.

Also, it helps with keeping programs from getting internet access that you do not want to have access. It comes with a tutorial and is generally quit easy to setup and configure.

[Warlady]

Thanks Nos. I will do that tomorrow. You've been a great help.

[nosferatuscoffin]

Welcome. :moo:

Let me know if you need any help with installing/uninstalling said programs.

[Warlady]

Thanks. You just use Add/Remove programs in control panel right?

Also, you said in another thread that you can import bookmarks in FireFox. Can you import AOL bookmarks too?

[nosferatuscoffin]

Thanks. You just use Add/Remove programs in control panel right?

It is best to use the Uninstall program that came with Norton as opposed to uninstalling it from Control Panel. The uninstall program should be listed under Start/Programs/Norton along with the other Norton modules. If you find it is not listed there, then go to Add/Remove Programs and uninstall it from there, as it should run the Norton Uninstall program from there. Just better safe than sorry.


Also, you said in another thread that you can import bookmarks in FireFox. Can you import AOL bookmarks too?

Unfortuantely, AOL bookmarks are propreitary and you can thank AOL for that. I have looked and looked for an AOL bookmark exporter and have never found one that works. You will just have to input them into Firefox manually.

The easiest way to do this to open both AOL and Firefox, go to your AOL Favorites listing, double-click on a Favorite, highlight the URL, then go to Firefox/Bookmarks/Manage Bookmarks, click the New Favorites button and then paste the URL into that window. You will need to do this with every AOL bookmark. Time-consuming I know, but this is just one more way AOL cripples it's software on purpose to keep people from dumping their service.

[DoctorDoom]

Try these pages. They're from the same developer, with different URLs.

URL Organizer 2 (http://www.urlorg.com/urlorganizer2/about.shtml)

Bookmark Buddy (http://www.bookmarkbuddy.net/about.shtml)

Here's a comparison of the features.

Product version comparison (http://www.urlorg.com/versions.shtml)

Re AOL Favorite Places, both of the above will import them, but there's a preliminary procedure.

In order to import your AOL or CompuServe 2000 Favorite Places into Bookmark Buddy (v3.2 or later) or URL Organizer (v2.4.16 or later), you must first save them to a separate 'Favorite Places' file. Once you'd done that, Bookmark Buddy or URL Organizer looks after the rest.

AOL version 5 or later, CompuServe version 6 or later

1) Launch AOL.
2) Select 'Favorite Places' from the 'Favorites' menu.
3) Click on the 'Save/Replace' button at the bottom-right of the Favorite Places window.
4) Leave 'Save the Favorite Places …' option selected.
5) Click on 'OK'.
6) Choose a suitable place to save the Favorite Places file. If necessary, make a note of where you save the file so that you can find it again with URL Organizer.
7) Click 'Save'.
8) In URL Organizer, choose Import from the Lists menu (click on the Help button on the Import URL Collection dialog for further guidance).

AOL version 4

1) Launch AOL.
2) Select 'Favorite Places' from the 'Favorites' menu.
3) Right-click on the 'Favorite Places' folder at the top of the Favorite Places window.
4) Select 'Save Folder As' from the pop-up menu.
5) Choose a suitable place to save the Favorite Places file. If necessary, make a note of where you save the file so that you can find it again with URL Organizer.
6) Click 'Save'. (You can close the new window that opens listing your Favorite Places again.)
7) In URL Organizer, choose Import from the Lists menu (click on the Help button on the Import URL Collection dialog for further guidance).Importing your Favorite Places (http://www.urlorg.com/tips/aol.shtml)

The downloads are fully functional, but with a 30-day limit. They'll do your AOL Favorites conversion. After that, if you have no further use for them, uninstall them, the end.

[nosferatuscoffin]

Are you sure they work? I know for a fact that Bookmark Buddy does not work properly with exporting BM's to Firefox or IE. I think I tried a couple of the others with no results either.

[DoctorDoom]

That's from the website of the authors. I don't have AOL, nor do I use Firefox, so I have no personal experience. What version did you use? Note that the above applies only to the listed versions or later ones.

[nosferatuscoffin]

Yep. I recently used the lastest version of Bookmark Buddy to transfer my mom's AOL favorites over to Firefox and all it produced were empty folders and links. She was/is using AOL 8.0 which BB claimed to support, but did not.

Worth a try for WL to try the others, but I would not hold my breath. To my knowledge, there is no AOL BM exporter that acutally works.

[BEST45CAL]

We use Zone Alarm and it works very well. We have a cable connection, so it's essential to have because of hackers.

McAfee is a dirty word around here. Tried to uninstall it and my new HP quit working. Called tech support and they offered to send me a new PC, but I took the PC back to Costco for a full refund. Costco said all the computers that were returned were returned for the same reason. So they were, at least at that level, aware of a problem.