Hello ...

I have some new "discoveries" about Zone Alarm.
One thing is, that I noticed, when you make/modify/delete rules, the size of .xml file in which you save current configuration is continuously increasing ...

Even, if I have set for example 30 Program Expert Rules, and in Privacy rules for 30 sites, 30 Blocked Zones, and then, when I wanted to "clear" a bit, and deleted all sites, all zones and most of Expert Rules, and save this configuration, the file size anyway increased for its 10 KB ...

The second thing is that if just running Zone Alarm (GUI - zlclient.exe) this process is normally on 300-400 GDI Objects (Windows XP), but if I also modify Expert, Zone, port, etc. Rules, and modify A LOT in current Zone Alarm "session", they increases almost to 1500 sometimes (in extreme conditions - really a lot of changing settings) ...


My question is - if I am connected o internet, and for some reasons, I don't want to disconnect soon, is it safe to restart zlclient.exe process ??
Of course, I dont mean to shut down Zone Aarm protection (also vsmon.exe) from system tray - right click - shutdown, but in Task Manager (or some other similar program). I actually already tried, and all seemed O.K., but I would like to hear also your opinion, if there is any possibility of some "side effects" if doig that ...



Thanks, and best regards

It is safe to shutdown the zlclient, however, you might trigger firewall hardening. As long as vsmon.exe is still on, you are still protected. I know that everything is fine and dandy if you start the vsmon service at bootup but not ZLclient.exe.

Thing is, I don't think it would do anything anyway because vsmon.exe might also be using those files.