I know the incompatibility of Norton 2009 and Zone Alarm have been explored in detail here (however, I did not get the answer I was looking for).
From what I gather: Even though Norton was looking for a solution, the incompatibility persists (I have proven it myself today with system freezes galore).
I cannot agree that the problem is that of two firewalls operating next to each other: NIS 2008 (with enabled Firewall) worked fine with Zone Alarm. The problem lies with Norton - suddenly it is incompatible when the 2008 version worked fine and I never had problems with Zone Alarm. I'm not saying it is a bug, it is just a changed configuration that makes NIS plus ZA impossible.
My question now is: I want something that gives me the main advantage I have gained from Zone Alarm - a constant control over who/what accesses my computer and which of my programmes want to access the internet. Can the NIS 2009 firewall provide this??
This is even more pressing as Zone Alarm has blocked 3 viruses in the last two months that Norton NIS 2008 (despite uptodate Life updates) did not even register.
From other Norton users who switched to other antivirus software after their subscription expired, I know that viruses were only picked up after the change(i.e. Norton did not spot them).
I appreciate that Norton blocks "evil" intrusion, yet I would like the choice of blocking programmes from my computer accessing the internet without my explicit consent (I don't want a constant update of Real Player or Adobe for example, and I don't need Media Player to access the internet if it just needs to play one of my CDs).
Is NIS able to offer a similar function (I'm not looking for anything I have to predetermine, I want to decide the individual case not make sweeping choices)?
If not, which NIS 2009 compatible programme offers these features?
I concede I should have checked earlier but in my 7year usership of Norton I never had a problem like this and thus "blindly" bought my yearly subscription.
Thanks everyone!