Vista SP1: What's up with all the Zone Alarm "Server" requests?

Factual Questions
1

I have been working with Microsoft tech support on an extraordinarily irritating Windows Update failure with Vista Home Supreme on my Dell notebook for more than 2 months! One thing I’ve been asked to do a few times is completely uninstall Zone Alarm Pro. After I do so and the Windows Update fails again, I re-install it again before I’m willing to connect to the Internet or even my local network. But after I do re-install it, I get somewhere around 100 – 100! – pop ups from Zone Alarm saying:

ZoneAlarm Security Alert
SERVER PROGRAM
Host Process for Windows Services is trying to act as a server.

Identification: None
Application: svchost.exe
Source IP: 0.0.0.0:Port nnnn, where nnnn is, in the following order:
57330
65082
60969
61808
53151
56325
51324
53816
53816
52286
60351
54647
50312
58427
53779
55291
64952
64300
53930
56092
56072
62046
61733
51405
58537
54146
55255
60058
56492
62558
64065
60905
55350
53468
58536
52827
62137
50460
55058
55869
50536
61444
52408
54377
55549
58532
59888
55600
55045
50576
57111
51815
54943
61413
52485
49892
61157
62599
54983
63205
56089
54812
61444
63203
63662
64935
50862
52742
54287
50796
5355
60603
65264
53740
62316
58657
52883
54075
58259
56280
63456
58766
65284
54681
49778
54686
59236
52212
59500

I stopped recording the port numbers at that point, but there’s plenty more before it finally stops asking. (There are no duplicates in that list). After each pop-up, I click “Deny”. (In comparison, XP Pro SP3 only asked that question for only a single port number!)

I have no wish to ever allow that computer to “act as a server” at any time and for any purpose that I’m cognizant of. The very idea troubles me for security reasons. I simply do not care that I wouldn’t be able to share printers or other remote assets and such, because I don’t use or need such capabilities.

Now, I know that I can click the “Remember this setting” before pressing “Deny” and, with luck, it won’t ask me about that port again, but the thing is, it seems to me it is possible that I actually do need one or more of them after all.

So my questions are: What’s going on? Why are there so many ports that svchost.exe are trying to act on? Are there any instances in which I need to allow svchost.exe to act as a server on one or another port, given that I don’t need to share any assets on that computer?

Thanks!

2

bump

3

No clue what the answer is, but I get that same sort of message on our home PC (Windows XP Home). I’ve so far always denied the request and it seems to be working just fine. It’s pretty irritating, in that I always say to do the same with all such requests, yet it comes back again a while later.

I haven’t seen it since we reinstalled Windows a few days ago, however (and I did reinstall Zone Alarm).

4

Thanks for your reply. I’m glad the bump worked.

I finally gave up wondering what was going on, so I checked the “remember this” check box after each and every “server” request. ZoneAlarm Pro did indeed remember those denials, and I haven’t seen any problems except for the possibility that it just might be involved in the fact that the Vista SP1 automatic Windows Update fails these days. It keeps getting “Updates were not configured correctly. Reverting changes”.

I’m in the process of installing the updates manually, and so far that’s been working…