blonde poker forum

I have  programme called "Zone alarm" (I think it's a firewall?) It Keeps telling me that this or that programme is requesting access to my computer. The problem is, I have no idea what to allow and what to refuse.

Just accept them on a case by case basis. It shouldn't be randomly occurring. It's usually you start doing something like open up a poker application and it needs to access the internet to work, so it has to get permission from ZA. Best thing to do is write down the names of the programs and google them. If it's a virus or somesuch, it'll pull it up.

Yes it can be a bit of a pain.  If I'm unsure I say no and search for the programme and check it out.  Also lots of things ask for access and work ok without it - so just say no when in doubt.  The great thing is tho that it does really alert you to anything dodgy.

If it asks you right after you initiate an application to run it will most likely be associated with this and in this case just say yes.  If it pops up out of the blue then saying no is the safe option.

ones that are poker.exe are your poker programs normally on your computer, allow them all
iexplore.exe is your internet explorer allow that too

In the settings section for Zonealarm you can turn off the alerts that someone is trying to access your computer and I would advise you to do that as its only telling you that it is doing its job and you can get a bit paranoid when you get loads of reports about blocked attacks if you are into p2p downloads then you will get some of those.

However you should think about getting rid of Zonealarm as a much better free firewall is Comodo this scores higher in reviews of firewall software and is recommended by a number of pc magazines. For a very good free antivirus use AVG its a lot better than many you have to pay for and doesn't eat up system resources like some.

Thank you, and welcome to blonde.

I used to have a Little device that sat in my systems tray and monitored  how hard my CPU was working. I lost it when I kicked Nortons into touch.

Dose anyone know where I can download a simple CPU monitoring tool?

Windows Task Manager will tell you how hard your CPU is working.

Right click on your taskbar and select Task Manager and it should appear in your system tray. Make sure Hide When Minimized is ticked in Options if you don't want it taking up room in your taskbar.

Excellent! Thank you.