Topic: Windows users, watch out for latest upgrade

I run Windows2000 on one of my machines. This morning it automatically installed update KB951748 and rebooted. After that I lost all access to the internet. I could not load any pages outside my network, including the setup page from modem. I could not download e-mail or access the net in any other way.

At first I thought I might have a virus. Fortunately I also have a Linux machine running in the office and I could access the the internet with it.

Eventually I found out that this upgrade (KB951748) is causing a problem for anyone using Zone Alarm. This problem only affects Windows2000 and Windows-XP users. It doesn't affect Vista.

If you are using Zone Alarm as a firewall on your PC, turn it off and you will be able to access the net. Of course you only want to do that as a test. I'm not recommending turning off Zone Alarm for good.

You can use the 'Add/Remove Programs' utility to remove the update. Look for 'Windows 2000 Hotfix - KB951748' in the programs list and remove it. Unfortunately, the next time Windows Update runs it will see that the update is missing and will try to re-install it.

Zone Labs has published an update to Zone Alarmwhich should fix the problem.


I hope my experience will be useful to anyone else having a problem with this update. Of course, if you're reading this, you've probably already solved the problem, or never had it in the first place.

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-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.

just on a side node - the windows update does improve the security of name lookups under windows - just in a way that the folks
at zone alarm weren't expecting.