[Ham-Computers] Zone-Alarm Security Suite, a REAL CPU hog (a long read)

[Philip, KO6BB]

Hi All,

To refresh, LATE last fall I got this new whiz bang machine (3.4GHz P4) with 
"oodles" of RAM etc.  Shortly after buying it I also bought the Zone-Alarm 
Security Suite (full blown with Anti-Virus, Anti-Pop-Ups, Firewall, 
Anti-Everything) and used it in place of the "eTrust 71" Virus Scanner that 
came with the machine.  After installing Zone Alarm I noticed that things 
like Email, opening web pages etc. slowed down a "little", but since I 
expected that I didn't think much about it.  While it's the fastest thing 
I've ever used, the machine just didn't seem to be anywhere as fast as I'd 
have expected, like it REALLY had a heavier workload than I was giving it.

THEN, last month I tried to set the machine up for RAID operation, during 
the process I LOST my restoration Partition and had to do a complete Windows 
XP-Pro and software  load directly from the OEM XP disks, Creative Sound 
drivers disk etc., losing whatever exact configuration "SystemMax" (the 
computers manufacturer) had on the machine.  Surprisingly enough, the 
machine ran significantly faster and smoother after this reload.  This 
indicated to me that "something" in the SystemMax software load was slowing 
things down.  Of course, at that time I also reloaded my Zone-Alarm Security 
Suite.

Well, last week I totally removed the Zone Alarm Suite and reverted to the 
eTrust AntiVirus and the "regular" Windows firewall (I also have a router 
with a "real Firewall" installed).  In my case at least the Windows Firewall 
along with eTrust seems to be sufficient as Zone Alarm never saw any attacks 
that got through the router anyway!

I do a LOT of audio work with this machine, Downloading "OTR" (Old Time 
Radio Broadcasts) from the Internet, cleaning them up or editing the 
"serials" into complete shows etc. Most of these actions would be 
"Blasphemous" to a hard-core OTR collector, but I prefer listening to merely 
"collecting".  I use "Audacity", a VERY GOOD Open Source Audio program for 
the actual audio work, then save ALL the files in the MP3 format at a 64K 
rate so that there is minimal degradation of what is often already a poor 
sounding program.  IT ALWAYS TOOK 12-15 MINUTES FOR "AUDACITY" TO CONVERT 
AND SAVE a 1 Hour long Audacity project into the MP3 Format, WITH ALL THE 
COMPUTER FANS RUNNING AT FULL SPEED. This indicates to me that the machine 
had a very heavy workload.  The processes window showed that the Dual 
Threading Processor was running about 50% load during these conversions!

NATURALLY,  everything else runs faster on the machine too (Email, Web 
Browsing, Open Office etc.), but on those programs the difference is MUCH 
less graphic!

NOW, Audacity consistently takes 1 minute and 15 seconds to do the SAME MP3 
conversion of a one hour long program (about a 28.8MB MP3 file), with NO 
fans grinding way!  THAT IS A 9.6 TO 12 TIMES INCREASE IN THROUGH-PUT, 
SIMPLY BY REMOVING ZONE-ALARM!   Just to be absolutely certain that Zone 
Alarm was the culprit, I reloaded it for a "trial run", and sure enough the 
machine was back to it's old slow self in doing the Audio Conversion.  I 
quickly removed it again and cleaned the registry!

Now this machine is everything I expected it to be, AND MORE!  Call me a 
"Happy Camper" 8^)

73 de Phil,  KO6BB
DX begins at the noise floor!

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