Obviously the firewalls themselves and by themselves are not the cause of
your troubles, Paul.
For all I know, both of the ones you mention are fine, especially Sygate ( I
happen to use it myself for a long time).
In all probability your problem is network related, but we better wait for
one of our "gurus" to diagnose your case.

Harry.



"PaulFXH" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi
When I took over this machine (1.8GHz CPU, 256MB RAM, 20GB HDD w/13GB
free and running on WinME) about 6 weeks ago, it had no installed
firewall.
So, I installed Zone Alarm which worked fine for about 10 days. Then,
one morning its icon failed to show in the system tray at start-up.
Further, ZA would not start when I tried the application icon in
Explorer.
However, the worst was still to come. Although I could connect to the
Internet (dial-up, I'm afraid), I just could not connect to any site
(Google, Yahoo, you name it). The little flashing dial-up connection
icon in the tray just wouldn't flash and eventually I got the "can't
connect to server" error message.
So, now I gave up and removed ZA from my computer and proceeded to
install the Sygate Personal Firewall which Trev's Tweaks
(http://www.burzurq.com/forum/trevtweak.html) says is the best for
WinME.
But, after working fine for about a week, it then gave exactly the same
problem leaving me with no option but to uninstall this one too.
I'm now trying Safety Net which seems fine after two days (even if it
is a little hyperactive) but would be very interested to hear if anyone
else has had this problem and knows how to fix it.
TIA
Paul