Tonight started up my machine and Windows advised 2 security updates were required. I installed them and after rebooting the machine was very sluggish. Just opening a folder would take ages, running a program an eternity. Found out ZoneAlarm Pro’s vsmon.exe was using 50–90% Processor all the time. The machine was periodically locking up and misbehaving to the stage where I couldn't get any browser to run.
Since vsmon.exe is a component of ZoneAlarm Pro I rebooted the machine and reinstalled it. I chose to install with all the default settings (not retaining previous) and after the usual reboot, wizard and permission requests for various applications seemed to be back to normal. This got me going long enough to have had a look at the ZoneAlarm forum and I found its not just me.
I actually suspected the Windows Updates but there are several messages from users that have not applied them and still have problems. One message points to a date related ZoneAlarm Pro failure, set the clock prior to 12 Jan 2005 and it goes away.
What is disappointing is I could find many user messages but nothing from ZoneLabs, not even a “We are working on it” message on the forums. If anyone else is having this who has seen official comment from ZoneLabs, be interested to hear what they said?
