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Aviator, go see what Steve Gibson at grc.com has to say about BlackICE.
ZA works great for me, just got the Pro version. Granted I've never tried uninstalling it, but the Windows Registry is (how can I say this gently?) an impenetrable abomination of the computing world. If ZA posts instructions of how to completely uninstall their product, then they've done all right by me. Most programs are hard to uninstall and that is done by design. Get a registry cleanup tool if you need assistance.
The only other firewall I recommend (and believe me, I know what I'm talking about on this issue) is called Tiny Personal Firewall. Tiny isn't as good as ZA, but it works all right. ZA can be hard to configure, but you just have to read the directions.
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Trickshot, I have to respectfully disagree. Many programs are hard to uninstall or don't completely take their footprints out of the registry. I find that annoying, too, but fine, I can live with that. In general it doesn't cause much, if any, harm.
ZoneAlarm is different in two important ways. First, it keeps portions of itself hidden [b]and running[/b] even after it "uninstalls". It's not just passively taking up space on your hard drive or in your registry. It is [b]still partially active[/b] after you remove it the normal way. I haven't found any documentation on the ZoneAlarm website that says that it will do this, but it does.
Second, if you attempt to remove the remaining portions of ZoneAlarm and don't do it exactly the right way, you will lose your Internet connection. I had a second computer and was able to use it to surf the web for help. Those with a single computer would have found themselves SOL, as in fact many people have, judging from the myriad stories I have read. That is a [b]bad[/b] thing to do to someone. Some people have even gone so far as to reinstall their OS because they couldn't figure out what had gone wrong. Due to the severity of the potential problem, ZoneAlarm should warn you up front in big print that uninstall may require special procedures and may have serious consequences if those special procedures are not followed exactly. I had no idea those special procedures existed. And why should I? I found an offending piece of ZoneAlarm remaining in my startup and removed it. That seemed perfectly logical since I had already uninstalled ZoneAlarm. How was I to know that it would kill my network connection? If ZoneAlarm is going to do something so weird and so serious, they should warn people up front instead of tucking the answer away on a web page that people with the problem may not be able to get to when they need it.