ZoneAlarm Reviews 125

If this was a Zero star I would have put that on.
I took out firewall security with Norton security for 5 years and paid £149.95 in 2019. Everything went right when it went on first. Then last year in 2020 they said they would update by norton for me and firewall and would be about an hour. They were all day. Then every couple of weeks I kept getting phone calls that they needed to update as wasn't registering their end. Again on all day and didnt work properly. This year got norton update on then kept getting phone calls as firewall didnt register their end still. In the end I got fed up of them keep coming on my computer and not working properly. Then they wanted further money.
I gave up. I sent email requesting refund as I still had 3 years left. They refused. said their policy only refunds after 45 days. Well in the 45 days everything supposedly worked. I believe they lied to me then.
I believe they are total scam artists, I don't trust them and anybody who asks me about them I will tell them that they are RUBBISH.
DO NOT USE THEM.
Get a proper company to cover you.
I have now got to find someone genuine and pay out more money to get my computer properly covered.
Thanks alot Zone Alarms.
You should not be trading.

After purchasing a mcafee security card from currys i put it on my laptop which wouldnt work, the mcafee tech person then passed me on to Zone Alarm which i didnt consent too and they wanted to charge me £139.00 for a 3 yr firewall contract.. when i questioned who they were and how did i get from mcafee to them i was told i was a stupid women who knew nothing !! And if i didnt want to pay then dont and put the phone down on me .. be very careful

SETUP A SUBSCRIPTION WITHOUT ME KNOWING !!!

ZoneAlarm Free Firewall is crap, popups, slowed computer, problem program. Make sure you turn ZoneAlarm off by going to interface under Tools uncheck "Start on Windows Startup" first, reboot do nothing. I use only Revo Uninstaller and uninstall. You can make sure w\Revo to remove everything from your computer because you can scan for leftovers. Use Windows Firewall.

I've been using ZoneAlarm on five machines for more than 10 years in spite of it becoming progressively more annoying and hard to feel confident about. I am very close to uninstalling it. It pops up just often enough with a detection to keep me from uninstalling it this very minute, but after spending 15 minutes trying to coax it into even offering to let me do an on-demand scan I am very close to pulling the plug on it. It used to be easy to use and understand but now it is just mystifying and frustrating.

Zone alarm used to be great 10 years ago.
I installed it recently because I was tired of Comodo interfering with other programs and me having to disable it regularly to play some games...
When i installed ZoneAlarm i was satisfied initially. It does fulfill it's function. However, it somehow manages to make my PC suffer more than a UltraHD FPS. I was having issues with lag everytime I open Firefox because it seems to analyse every bite that comes through, in other words it's extremely unefficient. The breaking point was 5min ago when I got a Blue Screen Of Death because of it. NEVER AGAIN

I have used Zone Alarm for many years and WAS a happy customer (except for the auto-renew charge weeks and weeks before it was due - I really hated that even though I turned it off every year it seemed to keep getting switched on again!).

In the last year or so I noticed a huge number of folders being created all over my hard drive (and NOT in unobtrusive places) most of them with names along the lines of "Check-PointSecurity!Folder!Do Not!Delete" etc. I can barely find my own folders in my file manager for the proliferation of such things. I have complained to support a few times and asked when this would change because it is unacceptable. Answer - basically - tough luck - don't delete them. No other solution offered, no plans to change this activity. So I either accept this spamming of my hard drive or vote with my electronic feet. Guess what I choose?

Also I notice here on Trustpilot that they aren't even bothering to address the numerous poor reviews they've received in the last 12 months. For shame.

I will be uninstalling today - but unfortunately it seems there are several issues with that process too!

Installed it
Next time i rebooted windows, windows would not boot up. I got that message page about problems with some options such as to do a FULL reset or try a system restore.
I chose system restore....LUCKILY it worked.

When Windows rebooted successfully, Zone Alarm was gone.

One day later,eveything is still fine.

I have used Zone Alarm since my first computer running Windows before Win95. This was the free firewall, it was and is great. Since that time the online world has changed and thankfully so has ZA. The very best part of it all apart from the product is the support service. To me this is what makes a great product, any issues are resolved quickly, efficiently with great courtesy. If you have an issue talk to them, it will be resolved. If only every other company were as good at customer service.

I have been a loyal user of Zone Alarm for more that 10 years, but the last 6 months have been hell, I put it down to my old Dell top, constant Malware alerts, rebooting, nothing showing up in the logs. Everything slowing down during 'updates', but the final straw was being told my credit card would hit for 59,95, the day before was offered a deal of 29,95, but still 30 days to run, when I rang California from Netherlands to complain, they gave a rebate on credit card, but took away my remaining 30 days leaving me without protection, I've had enough, sorry but they've lost their way big time, Good Bye Zone Alarm!

horrible, once you uninstall, it leave all leftover tools running on services at task manager, and there is no solution to remove checkpoint or zone alarm ransomware protection. running wise, its horrible. do not download and fall for free service.

Ran across this thread tonite while trying to find out why YouTube videos have not been acting right. I was disappointed to find that the issue might be ZoneAlarm. I used ZoneAlarm before CheckPoint acquired it. I used it for years and never had a problem. After purchasing a Windows 10 laptop a couple years ago, I allowed myself to be convinced that it was best to just allow Windows tools to protect my computer. But recently, I decided I wanted to go back to ZoneAlarm. I've tried to convince myself that ZoneAlarm could not possibly be the problem. But after uninstalling the program... well, I'm not having any trouble with YouTube videos now.

I'm also glad I ran across this review thread because I was about to start digging around to see if I should roll back audio drivers, or troubleshoot my speakers, etc.

It's sad when a great program is ruined.

Sadly, they used to be my go-to AV / Firewall app above all others. Not sure what changed, but my last few experiences with the app have been horrible. Go from having a gigabit connection, down to 30 mbps. Constant CPU spikes - on an i9-9900K with 64 GB RAM, running off of a lightning fast Samsung M.2 drive. The PC grinds to a crawl, the mouse jitters around the screen. Scans take over 5 hours - on that M.2 drive that I was talking about. It's a shame - I used to recommend this product to everyone. I'm an IT guy - specifically a CISSP/CCIE type of network guy, so I know how to optimize my PC and my network. We won't even go into the other bloatware that they install without asking. Long story short... stay as far away as you can. If you did buy, make sure you turn off the auto-renewal, because they will burn you with a jacked up price.

So I decided to compare a few firewalls for my win10, to choose one for my PCs. I installed them one by one, tested, then uninstalled. That's when I found out how absolutely, inexcusably terrible zonealarm is.

Uninstaller cannot stop the firewall. During uninstallation it will return you an error about inability to stop firewall and then uninstaller closes. The website says you should manually disable auto launch in firewall settings, reboot pc and then uninstall. That's where the fun starts:

- uninstaller doesn't tell you anything. you didn't check website before uninstalling? big mistake!

- after failed uninstalling you cannot open the firewall to disable auto launch like the website suggests, because the uninstaller deletes files required to open this specific window. Your only choice it to reinstall the whole thing, disable auto launch, reboot, and then try uninstalling again.

- after finally uninstalling and rebooting PC I checked Task Manager, and spotted 3 processes related to zonealarm. So the uninstaller removed firewall, but not additional software from zonealarm.

- I checked where this additional software is. The firewall I installed on drive D:, while this software was in Program Files on drive C:. That's right, zonealarm installer decided that I need additional software without asking me, and then installed it ignoring the installation path I set. How nice of them.

- This additional software has equally bad uninstallers, unable to uninstall anything. At this point I was fed up with this incompetence, so I removed all files manually in safe mode, and thoughtfully cleared registry from all remaining zonealarm garbage.

- I've never seen a software that completely fails to uninstall itself using its own official uninstaller, until now. And I uninstalled many antiviruses in my life. Imagine how terrible the code of this software should be to behave like this.

The whole process of uninstallation took me a bit more than a hour. It took me less time to remove actual viruses, I'm not kidding.

Only wanted the free Firewall which seemed OK but had to uninstall after a driver epnetflt.sys would intermittently cause Windows 10 to crash. Uninstalled via the Control Panel but after re-boot I checked Task Manager and found a number of Checkpoint processes still running which when disabled would auto restart. On further checking I found a large Checkpoint folder which had not been removed by the uninstall. Tried to delete manually but couldn't as files were in use. Booted from a live CD and deleted. This still left various Checkpoint .sys files in Windows32 folder which were being loaded by entries in the Registry. Had to use the Sysinternals Autoruns program to delete the Registry entries and then manually delete the .sys files including the troublesome epnetflt.sys file. After this another issue I had had with Windows refusing to shutdown unless the shift key was held while clicking on shutdown disappeared. This program is Malware - avoid. Now using the inbuilt Windows firewall and my whole system is running more smoothly using much less memory and disk space.

You can not uninstall this crap once installed. Prepare to reinstall windows to get rid of all of this crap.
Zonealarm used to be fantastic, now it is a parasite Even when it has been uninstalled, it installs some other crap you never installed in the first place.
It locks you off the internet so you can not find a fix online without a 2nd pc.
I have an Intel i7 with 64gb Ram yes a £5000 pc and my amazon kindle loads pages faster after installing this crap

I have used the software for nearly a year and it works well and better that Norton which I was using. But I have impaired hearing and the Support Team in UK seem to speak with heavy Asia accents and the gable their words so they are difficult to hear. The initial 'sign up' documention leaves a lot to be desired in term of passwords and account sign in. Bill

I have deleted that nightmare about one year ago, since that time my computer runs perfectly, before that, it was simply a nightmare. Blue screen and so on where my daily routine, I don't know what the hell this company is doing but for sure it was as harmfull as a virus

You are paying over $600.00 in ten years, almost $300. in 5 years for a firewall. At the end of the year you DO NOT own the software. If you stop paying you lost it all.
You are better off purchasing hardware for the same cost. Stay away from unnecessary subscription based apps. It simply is a waste of money.
Antivirus software is subscription because updates on virus definitions are done. Firewalls need NONE.... Just silly to throw your money away on this.