ZoneAlarm Free v10.1 ISSUE RESOLVED

A cautionary tale ...

I am running Windows 7 Home Premium on a 64-bit Intel system using ATI HD 5600's.
I was having an impossible time trying to get ISBoxer to work for me.

Through a long series of trial and error procedures, I discovered that my problem was ZONEALARM.
I was only able to get ISBoxer working when I completely wiped my system and reinstalled. (ugh!)

I would like to ask Lavish Software to add ZoneAlarm to their list of CULPRITS which interfere with ISBoxer's ability to function.
ZA interferes in ways, I might add, that I would have never guessed possible.
Some of the performance issues resulted in exefile.exe and eve.exe crashing/hanging with 79MB of memory used.
I was only ever able to load MORE than one slot at a time ONCE. Was never able to repeat.

This thread, for instance, doesn't mention ZA at all : viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1251

After several years of being a loyal ZA user I now wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy...
Here's why: It's impossible to uninstall! It borderlines on malware in how insidious it is to remove.
When you uninstall it, it breaks your networking capabilties (even in safe mode).

I tried everything I could think of to get ISBoxer and ZA to play together:

- Adding ISBoxer and the toolkit to the whitelist ...didn't work
- Switching ZA into GAME MODE (allow all) ...didn't work
- Turning off ZA protection entirely ...didn't work
- Uninstalling ZA traditionally ...didn't work , even using ZA's own CLEAN.EXE (Clean Uninstaller) did't work
- Uninstalling ZA using Revo Uninstaller ...didn't work
- Safe Mods uninstalls ...didn't work
- Installing ZA Update ...didn't work

The ONLY resolution I found was to completely format and reinstall windows.
To nuke my system for morbid.

ISBoxer and EVE worked flawlessy at first try.

I hope this helps someone from losing their mind.

[lax]

Actually, many people use Zone Alarm with ISBoxer and Inner Space. I believe that it's Zone Alarm ForceField, specifically, that is the problem. It is apparently a web browser plugin, and gets loaded in-process as ISWSHEX.dll.

I think I can detect that and add a warning when ISBoxer is launched. Thanks for all of the details you've provided

[lax]

ISBoxer 40.0.210.1 or later (can update through Help->About) should now detect that DLL and provide a warning. I also added it to that post.

Now that's some really sweet customer service right there, ty !
Wish I'd known about the problem being exclusive to the forcefield process, but meh ...
more good than bad comes from a fresh install.

I run zonealarm and im having the same problem, its about a 70% chance of hanging on boot of each client. I can terminate the exe and then click the team name and try again. I can get multiple clients going but its a pain in the ass.

I don't have any warning on boot but my problem sounds exactly the same as the above poster. I'm running a fresh install with just eve/za/isboxer installed.

[lax]

Okay... Do you have Zone Alarm ForceField installed? Because if you do, then try shutting it off, since that would be exactly the same issue as the OP.

If not, then I either need Hijack This! logs (detailed at the bottom section of What to do if ISBoxer, or your game, will not launch), or I need the "Diagnostics for game crashes" from the Help menu in ISBoxer.