A Techy Question.

[jambutty]

Originally Posted by entwisi

Trust me you are worrying about nothing . You have no choice unless you physically power the router on after you have your desktop fully loaded.

Windows negoitates DHCP as the first part of profile loading(which is a right royal PITA if you want to switch users whilst one person is downloading some stuff as it disconnects their session. ) As soon as you have a network address the internet is available. At this point you haven't even started loading the desktop never mind the programs set to autostart.

So If you really do want to do this then power your PC on and have your router somewhere handy that you can hit the switch only when you say so.

Some routers can be set to connect on demand but I find this tends to not be that reliable as you end up with requests timing out before your connection is up and the local network stabilised.


Your choice of course but as said, its not worth worrying about.

A development that I have just noticed.

AVG Pro is set to seek updates at 0939 or when I connect to the Internet whichever is the later.

During these last couple of days it has been after 0939 when I logged onto the Internet and I noticed that long before ZA was up and running AVG Pro was getting updates. And on one occasion RoboForm came up with its “there is a newer version available, do you want to upgrade now” box before ZA was running.

This clearly establishes that traffic can come and go from my computer freely without the protection of ZA and that is not acceptable.

Anti this, that and the other software is only as good as the latest update so it would be possible for ‘something’ to get into my machine between the time that the Internet connection is made and ZA being launched. If that ‘something’ is brand new (and new nasties are coming out all the time) no anti this, that and the other software will be able to do anything about it until the nasty has been identified and countered.

So I’m back to my original question. How do I get ZA to launch before the Internet connection is established without having to keep the router switched off until ZA is operational?

[Neil]

Here you go mate just for you I did a bit of googling and found this info from here Security Product FAQ: ZoneAlarm - CastleCopsWiki

Q: ZoneAlarm is one of the last to start up. Won't my computer be unsafe until it loads?

A:By default, ZA starts running as a service when the computer starts. Once you log in, you will see the User Interface (zlclient.exe) start up, but the firewall (vsomon.exe) is already in place.

I hope you will sleep better now. As Ian pointed out your initial defence is really your router. Zone Alarm is really a secondary defense for you.

Have you done a Shields Up test at Home of Gibson Research Corporation to check how visible you are on the internet? It is worth checking.