CPU running at 100% after 10 mins

[moggy44]

I have a machine which I have just upgraded to Win XP, also put Zone Labs Firewall and AVG Anti-Virus.
The machine has a Jetway J993ASL MB and 450 mhtz celeron proc, a bit on the old side.
After about 10 mins the CPU process seems to be running at 100% and slows the machine down, the program that seems to take up all the process time is VSMON.EXE running at 65-75%which is something to do with Zone Alarms.
If I end this program all is fine but ZA True Vector shuts down .
Can anyone tell me what may be causing the problem.
I was in fact going to upgrade to Jetway A266B MB with a AMD XP2100 proc will that cure the problem.

Regards John.M

 

[jsauce]

Well you are not the only one to have this problem. It seems to be an issue with zone alarm. What is happening is that something is accessing ports and zone alarm is freaking out. The problem is there is no real fix for it. From what I've read about it, you really don't have a lot of choices. One is you can shutdown zone alarm, which will immediately clear the problem. Two usually in %Systemroot%\Internet Logs you can delete all the files, but you will lose all your zone alarm settings when you do it. But it will clear up the problem for most, then you have to set it all again. Third download an older version that isn't so strict with connections.

In my opinion though why use zone alarm at all, if you have Windows XP Pro then you also have ICF which can block incoming and outgoing ports. My personal preference is to setup a network with a linux machine using ipchains/iptables to act as the firewall/router/gateway for the network. Its secure and offers the ability to use many computers without having to install firewalls on all of them. And of course freeing up resources on your computer, normally having to be dedicated to a hog like zone alarm is good too.

John D. Saucier
jsauce@magicguild.com
Certified Technician
Network Administrator

 

[CSATech]

If you have an antivirus program that scans you e-mail you should disable it. It is possible that that is causing the problem. I guess there going to fix this problem in the next version.

 

[Ineedjava]

Hi jsause,

>>...have Windows XP Pro then you also have ICF which can block incoming and outgoing ports.<<

Are you sure about this? I was under the impression that the weakness in the XP Pro firewall was that it does not block outgoing ports.

 

[jazzgirl]

XP's firewall does not block outgoing packets.

Jazzgirl

 

[AP81]

You can always disable Zone Alarm and download another free firwall, such as Sygate or Tiny or Kerio, etc.

 

[jsauce]

Windows XP Pro does block outgoing packets, Windows XP home does not block outgoing packets.

John D. Saucier
jsauce@magicguild.com
Certified Technician
Network Administrator

 

[bcastner]

. There is no difference in ICF between XP Home and Pro versions.

. ICF does not regulate outgoing traffic. You can easily see this as there are no options to modify outgoing port behavior, only incoming port behavior.

cf. for example,

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...port/kb/articles/q308/1/27.ASP&NoWebContent=1

. On both Pro and Home you can control outgoing behavior through TCP/IP Properties, Advanced, Options, but this is port based and rather crude.

. On both Pro and Home you can control outgoing behavior on an IP basis under Internet Options, but this effects both incoming and outgoing behavior without distinction.

 

[jsauce]

I'm sorry you are correct, after further investigation my documentation doesn't hold water. After examining the firewall I can see that it seems to only support incoming traffic. As I stated before my personal preference is to use ipchains/iptables, so I was using my docs for the ICF info. Anyway I'm sure there are plenty of good firewalls to choose from, if you find this zonealarm bug to be a problem. From what I've read a lot of people find that their computers become unstable after a while.

John D. Saucier
jsauce@magicguild.com
Certified Technician
Network Administrator

 

[bcastner]

For a good link source and discussion of freeware firewalls see Charles Petri's site:

http://www.petri.co.il/firewall_recommendations.htm

 

[mike11973]

control alt delete and click on the process tab....scroll down and find out what is pegging your cpu out....i run zone alarm pro and have no issues w/ this...i have in the past and found it to be certain programs...i just had to go and find out which one it was...dont end tasks unless you know what you are doing or you will instantly crash the os

 

[Moonrsr]

http://www.reger24.de/prozesse/VSMON.EXE.html

 

[Moonrsr]

QUOTE:
I've searched this group for finding a reason for this, but I cannot find
the answer. I use ZA Pro with peer file sharing (... e.g., WinMX ...) ...
and I find that ZA's &quot;VSMON.EXE&quot; will inflate, both for RAM and CPU
consumption. The result is Windows 2000 slows to a crawl, until ZA is
disabled and re-enabled (... repeat every 12 hours with peer file sharing
running).


The remedy is easy enough ... but many of us (... the WinMX NG ...) are
wonder what is going on???

 

[GMcNamara]

This is exactly what my 2000 machine was doing when I got the blaster worm. Have you installed patches?

 

[Moonrsr]

Question: I recently uninstalled ZoneAlarm Pro, but when I look at my taskmanager, I see vsmon.exe is still running. When I reboot, it's still there. For me, this wouldn't be such a big problem, but it seems to be consuming a lot of my memory and CPU, the longer the more. Does anyone know how I can end and remove this proces?
Response:

http://www.securitybugware.org/Other/3798.html

I understand that the above was posted 2 years ago, does anyone know if this has been rendered...

 

[Moonrsr]

Found the answer to my question;

http://www.securiteam.com/securitynews/5HP0C0K35S.html

Also found that quite a few users that use Outlook simply turned off MailSafe and their comp went back to normal.