Recovering from disaster, Zone Alarm

All the while I was happy that Zone Alarm freeware was doing great jobs.

It will notify me whenever there are some unauthorized access comming to my computer.

It even blocks the LAN ports such as file and printer sharing. I can't even 'ping' to my own computer. It was great.

Until one day the program starts to show some abnormal characteristics. I booted my computer as usual and noticed that it REALLY slow!. I had no idea as this was my first encounter with program.

So, I waited for some time and take a look on the Windows Task Manager and it shows that the program vsmon.exe was the culprit. Consuming exessive memory until too much of virtual memory being consumed.

The image below shows the system's status after ending the VSMON.EXE process.


This problem really gave me a bad time... :( I can connect to internet and browse for nearly 15 minutes only. After that, the HTTP port will get blocked and I cannot browse anymore. But, I can still chat on YM and MSN....

Then it took me sometime to know that what is this and why is this happening. Finally, I learned that Zone Alarm is the main cause of this problem. The program VSMON.EXE is actually the service so-called TrueVector Internet Monitor.

Therefore, I hope that Zone Alarm will fix this bug in the comming versions.
Well, I can't say much because afterall this is a freeware.

Further info:
http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/vsmon.exe.html