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ZoneAlarm nag screen popup killer |
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this explanation applies to Vista as ZoneAlarm doesn't show this popup in XP as far as I know. |
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Problem background |
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| The ZoneAlarm "Tell Me More" nag screen is not an internet popup but just a normal Windows window, so you need a popup-killer for that type of windows. The one I found to do the job was "Pablo's Popup Killer". It has an option to define which windows you don't want to see on your desktop and it checkes all open windows every second or so and eliminates those that were put in its deadlist. | ||
| I moved "Pablo's Popup Killer" into Vista's Startup directory and soon found out that Vista didn't allow that application to startup at windows start. However I was sure that there were other applications of which the startup wasn't blocked of by Vista. Thus Vista must be able to find out what sort of software calls are used by an application to decide which application is potentially harmless and which is not. | ||
Solution |
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| I wrote a very simple 'harmless' executable called AppStarter.exe. It has to be placed in the startup directory and is started in invisible mode at Vista's startup. The only thing it does is waiting a while before it starts a slightly modified and also invisible version of "Pablo's Popup Killer". After that job is done it kills itself. | ||
| The modified version of "Pablo's Popup Killer" in the downloadable package has ZoneAlarm's "Tell Me More" window already on its deadlist. As soon as it has killed that popup, it also kills itself and that's it! | ||
Warning |
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| I primarily wrote the code for my own use and thus put no efforts in making it userfriendly. All directories and filenames are hardcoded in the software and therefor cannot be customized. So you have to install the software exactly as prescribed. All you do differently is at your own risk! | ||
Installation guide |
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Download the zipfile ZAPopupKiller.zip.exe -don't execute it, won't work!-, remove the .exe extension that is only added to start the download mechanisme, and unpack the resulting zipfile ZAPopupKiller.zip. |
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| Create a new directory C:\EigenProgramma\AppStarter\ and copy the application AppStarter.exe into that directory. | ||
| The resulting path must look like C:\EigenProgramma\AppStarter\AppStarter.exe | ||
| Create a new directory C:\Program Files\KillPopups | ||
| and copy all KillPopups files from the Zipfile into that directory. | ||
| The result must look like this | ||
| The last step is to set AppStarter.exe as a startup program. | ||
| Find the Startup entry in the Vista menu and place the mouse above that entry. | ||
| Press the right mousebutton and select the 'open' option. This will open a new window showing the related Roaming directory. | ||
| Copy AppStarter.exe into that Roaming directory. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| I would appriciate to hear if it has solved your problem or not! | ||
| 26-04-2009 | ||
