Okay heres my problem. Every so often my taskbar locks up. Any apps that are running on the desktop are fine in fact you dont notice anything wrong untill you minimize then realize you cant get it back. In some cases where the kids have been playing games the clock has stopped 40 min before they stopped playing.
So my taskbars locked up but i can get to task manager so i am able to end the prossess for explorer then start it again this works untill you try to access "connect to" in the start menu then it freezes again. Why would i want to access that u ask well after resarting explorer my internet connection seems to be connected but wont load web pages or connect to e mule. So i have nothing connected so i cant disconnect and nothing will connect . So i restart the pc only now it wont shut down gets stuck on the "saveing your settings" page .When i press the restart on front of pc it boots back up fine and what worries me is that i never get the message "windows was not shut down properly"
I've had the prob about 6 months and in that time i have more or less replaced all the main bits mem,pross,board not because of this but because i had an old slow machine, but even this has not helped one bit.
I am security conscious as i got two scary letters from my isp threatening to cut me off if i didn't cease my online activities ( they knew i used mule and bt, I have stopped using bt as it seemed to happen alot with bt)
So i use protowall which i update from this site
http://methlabs.org/sync/
I also use blocklist manager full list in e mule
I find a full list from BLM in protowall wont even let me sign on to my mailbox.
I use ZA as a firewall and i have imported the peergaurdian list which i have to say was very trcky and i had to get xml spy
to do it
Would welcome any help on this.
Thanx in advance

no idea why you are having such problems but might aswell start off with ditching Zone Alarm as it's a pile of steaming .....Sygate is a better option but there are many more options for a firewall before you should even think about using ZA

.... shit....

the toilet here is the third door on the left, hurry along now before it's too late

ok im gonna try both sygate and kerio see how i get on with importing the blacklists
thanx again will let u know how i get on

well so far so good ive loaded Kerio and i think ive managed to import the blacklists from bluetack. I converted them to the kerio format then opened the back up i made in notepad copyed the new text in ,then imported back in seems to be running ok only thing is whereas in za you could see the list of the addresses blocked you cant in kerio so im just presuming its now blocking eveything ive added. if ive done this wrong please tell me :-o
also do u enable gateway mode ?
thanx in advance

should be blocking all in the list

dunno bout gateway mode...i'm running sygate

feel abit safer puttin mule back on

Hi just thought id let you know that swapping ZA for Kerio didnt solve my problem. Kerio is ok but asks too many questions a lot of which im not sure of the answer, I understand the main progs access bit but what about all the little progs in sytem32 like mvhost.exe or windows print ?,and even after your connected with IE it asks if it can connct to or recieve ?
will give it a week then might change to sygate.