Firewall Meltdown

Had a bit of a computer meltdown last night while updating my ZoneAlarm [free] firewall. I was prompted to update and hit OK and the process started. Downloaded the update file. Executed it. It got up to twenty-nine percent completion. And then it just stalled. Stalled. Stalled. Stalled. I ended the process. I cranked it up again. But was prompted that certain .dll files were missing or something.

While I was fiddling around to find a way out of this mess, I must have moused over the harddrive and I noticed that something had just eated 5GB worth of space. Blech. I went through the Temp directories and unzip directories and cleaned up a bit, but I have no idea where that extra 5GB all of a sudden came from.

Restarted the comptuer.

Retried to update ZoneAlarm. Now, it was saying that the TrueVector monitor [vsmon.exe] was running and had to be shut off before continuing with the process. I opened up my Task Manager. It wasn't there. I think that within the first twenty-nine percent of the update, the updater deleted the last version of ZoneAlarm in the process.

I tried to salvage the situation by restoring my HDD to a previous date, say anyday but yesterday. GoBack tells me that there is no safe restore point. Fuck.

I was already late to my volunteer duties for the Chuck Pennacchio campaign so I just packed up my stuff and headed out.

When I got back home, I was so fed up, I just backed up my files to my external HDD and wiped the computer with a clean install. That took a few hours. Now the stupid Windows Updates are slowly being downloaded and installed. I'm up to the SP2. That'll be done later tonight and I'll re-install all of my programs and applications afterwards.

Comments

[Josh]

You don't use a Mac??? I'm shocked.

[acm]

grrrrrr.
sympathies to anybody who has to do this. whatever platform you're using (and I use both Mac and Windows), having a new install create woes and conflicts is enough to make you want to swear off the things...

sigh.
hope it gets sorted out while you still have hair.
a

[Matt]

Holy shite. I got the same update message this morning and downloaded the update, but I haven't installed it yet. Think I'll wait for the next version.

Sucks that you had to do a clean install. I hope your computer at least feels a little spiffy afterwards.

[Ellen]

Good Luck - reconfiguring your PC bites ass! In it's dying days I felt like I was doing it almost monthly to the baby compaq. Blech!