So yesterday I switched on my monitor to see that Zone Alarm had updated and wanted me to reboot, which I declined to do at the time because I was on my way out the door and only wanted to check some stock quotes and see if Ent. Lawyer had posted up his daily Blind Item yet.
I did notice that my system seemed very, very slow but figured that would correct itself after a reboot, which I did later that day. Well, NO, it did not correct itself and in fact Task Manager was reporting my CPU usage pegged at 100% even with all my resource hogs shut down.
I run the Zone Alarm Security Suite, full version, and saw that a process named “vsmon.exe” was really chewing up the resources. A quick Google told me that process belongs to Zone Alarm. So I went into Zone Alarm to see what had changed.
After mucking about a bit, I realized that the E-mail protection feature, which I do not need, had been turned on. I don’t use a local client like Outlook or Eudora, only web-based mail like Gmail, Yahoo, etc, so I do not need this feature and since it was the only change I could find, I turned it back off and rebooted.
And there’s your fix 🙂
Unless you are using local clients that pop your mail to your PC, you don’t need Zone Alarm attempting to monitor incoming email. Web-based services do that work for you, so let them deal with the resource issues 😉
regards
Synchronicity 
Check this out. I’ll try it later today.
Microsoft Knowledge Base Article – 321434
Thanks for the heads-up on Vsmon.exe. Seeing the same heavey usage, I too googled and found your message. Thanks again.
You’re quite welcome, and thanks for dropping by 🙂
I had this problem once before also. It’s good to have a quick and easy fix for it though, the last time i was informed to re-install ZAP.
vsmon is only part of the problem for most people who are dealing with high cpu loads during idle times. usually its in a services.exe program that is most of the time actually from microsoft. other times its a trojan. so bad news for some. reinstalling zone alarm pro or suite for that matter is pointless as the mail fix for it is above. keep your eyes peeled on the idle cpu load kiddies. services.exe is a bad mammajamma sometimes. people can even use it to take info out of your computer. *gasp*
I’m not using a web based email. Emails come into my PC. vsmon is running and slowing the pc down. Looking at the task manager it shows it changing users and its size is constantly changing.
Is there a better way of checking email if this is shut down in ZA.
Thks, Don
So I was having this same problem after I did a ZA update? recently and figured I should prob Google it. Long story short, I’m on this page, followed directions, restarted [x2], but vsmon.exe is still there and being a resource hog.
anyone else have this problem still?
Turning the e-mail protection feature off didn’t fix the problem for me. Google led me here too and desperation is great. Problem not solved.
I have ZoneAlarm Anti-spyware version:7.0.337.000
TrueVector version:7.0.337.000
Driver version:7.0.337.000
Anti-spyware engine version:5.0.172.0
Anti-spyware signature DAT file
version:01.200707.1935
Vsmon.exe and zlclient.exe took up 100% of CPU and stayed there for hours. This happened after an upgrade in maybe March. No problems at all before then. It did not happen all the time but often enough to be a real pain.
ZA had me go thru a series of hoops to find conflicts but that did not help.
My ZAAS was set to load on startup. Whole those 2 .exe’s hogged up the CPU, nothing else could be done, not even normal shutdown/reboot.
When it finally let me in, I reset ZAS so it did not load at startup.
Now vsmon.exe starts at lower % CPU levels, near 0, climbing to 100% and staying there for about 5 to 10 seconds, then returns to 0. I assume this is the firewall starting up. It is still loading at startup.
I load ZAAS manually. There are no conflicts and no problems now. Both vsmon and zlclient.exe run at or near 0%.
My computer has an older 2.26ghz Celeron with 2gb ram running an up to date XPSP2.
i found the solution (zone alarm pro)
go to command => msconfig => services => truevector internetmonitor (manufracture zone labs,LLC) uncheck => apply => on the warming “ok” => reboot and login as admin now vsmon.exe takes around 26.344kb of your memory
spyware & email protection are on !
i monitorid now 1 day and this stay stabile and zone alarm works stabele
enjoy
That actually turns off the firewall function! BAD idea.
Wow i have a reasonably fast computer that i’ve built and leave on for weeks at a time, I’ve always wonder why after a couple of days my idle cpu is at around 50% and I lose about 600mb of 2 gigs in memory to that blasted vsmon.exe… somehow the idea that this is part of the drudgery that is windows stuck with me and I always thought vsmon was a windows process. Now after years of suffering my cpu consumption is down to 1-4%, great detective work buddy!
tnx
this was quite easy to find (4 me)
v
i am wondered that the people of zonealarm doesnt find this solotion
I found this page after noticing that vsmon.exe was using between 50% and 55% of my CPU. I checked it and MailSafe is off, so having it off doesn’t guarantee that the problem will be solved. (Just for reference, I have a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 CPU.)
I have never installed or used ZoneAlarm, but I have vsmon.exe using up my CPU all of a sudden. Two of my browsers no longer work(Firefox and Safari) but I can still use IE, as long as I don’t try to download anything. How can I get rid of this rascal? I use CA for my virus and firewall.
OK, a few more readings and I see CA uses vsmon.exe so I uninstalled it and loaded the nedw 2007 version. All fixed. Thanks for letting me vent.
If you use the “fix” above (reposted below for your conv.) you are turning off your firewall!!! Internet Mon is the firewall portion. Spyware and email protection are worthless if you turn your INET protection off. 🙂 Just my teo cents.
——————————————————-
On July 28, 2007 at 3:29 am geek Said:
i found the solution (zone alarm pro)
go to command => msconfig => services => truevector internetmonitor (manufracture zone labs,LLC) uncheck => apply => on the warming “ok” => reboot and login as admin now vsmon.exe takes around 26.344kb of your memory
spyware & email protection are on !
i monitorid now 1 day and this stay stabile and zone alarm works stabele
enjoy
vsmon.exe chewing up CPU and keeping it at 100% also led me here. I’m using Celeron CPU 208GHz with 480 MB RAM.
From above”i am wondered that the people of zonealarm doesnt find this solotion”. Good question. ZA was great under Steve Gibson. Understand that he now works for MS.
I’ve noticed other deficiencies of ZA Suite – appears to have let through a trojan.
As I don’t see a clear resolution above i’ll have to put up with it. It does annoy me that ZA do not offer an email address on the website as I would like to report it to them and maybe the sheer number of complaints will suggest action.
Same problem here! Going to the ZA support website is an exercise in futility. I was very pleased with them up until this “upgrade”. I will be going elsewhere. If anyone else comes up with a fix that doesn’t turn off the firewall, please post.
thanks!!! came here from google too! 🙂
Note, the webmail protection is really worthless if you use Eudora for email. Thats the beauty of Eudora. As long as you use the “download all to disk” and not just read all from the server. Because, it extracts all attachments straight to disk. That fact, means it writes the exe or whatever to disk. The virus scanner will hit that as well.
The webmail protection feature just means its going to scan it twice.
Virus protection scheme 101. Never ever run anything that you have not written to your disk. Scan it an extra time if you like, but most all good anti-viral programs that run real time will check what you are writing to your disk.
found this page on google, alot of help!
re-installed zonealarm after which time pc was very slow, turned off mail monitoring (which i dont need and had turned off originally) and its a lot faster!
nice one
Got here through a google search for vsmon related issues. Turns out there’s a worm called WORM_RBOT which uses the file name vsmon.exe reported by Zonelabs here: http://download.zonelabs.com/bin/free/securityAlert/13.html
i also found this page using google. thanks for the advice. i love the decrease in cpu resources.
I have a Dell XPS 400 Desktop computer with Duo Core and 1G memory, Win XP. I am really tired of this problem as people described here: 2 ScanningProcess.exe and 1 vsmon.exe running at all the times and eating my 60-70% of CPU performance. I can not do even a very simple task on my computer. The Google leads here. Anyone if knows how to solve this problem, please help to post the solution or the links here. Very appreciated!!!
If I could not find a solution then I have get rid of ZA which I have paid for. And may need to re-format and re-install the system, which I really don’t want to do…
Thanks in deed!
I too am having problems with this VSMON.EXE and I have ZA Suite. Also am having problems with the above poster with 2 scanningprocess.exe. So far, knock on wood, the only time the vsmon.exe program is chewing up my CPU is on reboot. It takes about 5 minutes then is fine and then about 5 minutes later, the scanningprocess program rips up my CPU.
Tried the “easy” fix of shutting off Mail preference in ZA and ofcourse, no buena. That would’ve been too easy.
Our company dumped ZA because of the resource hog problem
I have (for 2mths) system freeze only at connection to my broadband provider. ie when I boot up and dont connect to the internet ZA (vsmon.exe) does not drain the cpu.
On connecting to the internet vsmon.exe consumes 50% of my 3.0ghz P4 (with HT), the the whole system is non responsive for about 1-2mins. This time has been increasing lately. Why is the system non responsive when only 50% cpu is used, weird? After the 1-2 mins everything goes back to normal, ie 1-2 % cpu usage.
What the hell is going on? It is mildly annoying really, just wish Zone Alarm would admit the issue as i am thinking about changin as well, a fall from grace for ZA in the future maybe?
I came here via Google, as have so many others. ZA sounds like my problem also. That being said my only question is where am I? Is this a reliable site? How to check it?
thanks for ur help…
I came in from google too after experiencing near-freeze PC performance and noticed that vsmon.exe is taking up most of the resource (50% – 55%).
I’ve noticed that vsmon.exe only gets really hyped up when there’s any kind of internet traffic (ANY, including a simple page load) to the point of a non-responsive system.
When no traffic is going thru the network, it actually recovers somewhat to normal levels.
I have no idea what good is my computer if I’m not on SOME kinda internet activity on it.
I used to swear by zonealarm and recommend it to EVERYBODY, but recent 2 years it appears to have really gone down the gutters.
It took a lot to turn this once fan to be looking else where.
Anyone has a good firewall/antivirus package to recommend?
Thx the help, but I have another problem: Please if u have time see it. I have 6 svchost.exe running in my computer, an alg.exe (i don’t know what is it), and and anyway if u have some ideas, how to run my computer faster pls tell me. Some data from my pc: avast 4.7 home edition, Zone alarm by check point. Thx.
Yes I’ve been having the vsmon problem. It appears to only happen when booting. It is not triggered until a browser tries to go somewhere on the internet. Then it takes 100% CPU for 5 min, then okay. I tried restarting various ways, turning off ZA functions like antispy, virus monitor, mail check. None of that prevented it. What could it be checking for 5 min? It holds up browser access until it’s done, then lets it go, everything moves. Dread starting any other program during that time, it won’t. Pity users who don’t know, who don’t even know how to use taskmanager, who might do a quick restart. There’s only one vsmon, so that should rule out trojan? (But I have two svchost. Hope that’s not a problem.)
When I made my last post I was on the 2 week trial of the full Zonealarm. Now on free basic, and that doesn’t happen, so it’s to do with the advanced features.
I went to the Zonealarm user forum. Didn’t ask about this, but got the impression the people working for ZA there are mentally deficient dorks. That may explain some things.
Thanks for that. It worked for me
Had the same problem today. Thanks for the fix.
Thank you for this fix! Googled “vsmon.exe” because I had the same problem. Cheers.
Thanks so much for the tip, Zone alarm has been gaffing my system for weeks. Great now. Much appreciated!
I’ve had the problem twice now. Each time I have uninstalled ZA(Pro) and reinstalled it. Fixed the problem both times.
Same story as those above. Had problems, found this page, and just wanted to give you a big THANK YOU. It’s running much better now.
Cant tell you how happy i am with finding your blog, it didnt slow my system down 100% but still it was there, without an email-program, and chewed up my CPU.
Cheers!
-David at JC-Performance Sweden
E-mail protection somehow got turned on. Yep, that was it. My CPU was running at 100%. Googled and found your site. I have used Zone Alarm free for years w/o issue and will continue to do so. Thanks so much for your information 🙂
Found you on Google…good fix buddy…thanks. Just happend & jumped to 75-90% CPU usage & I said…”I’ll get you & your little dog too”…lol, & here I am : ) . Mail got turned on, but funny…I know I had that setting turned off & I’m possitive about that! Anyways, it’s off now & back to 2-6%…with occational flashes of up to 20%…depending on what I’m doing, but they only last a second. I’m running the full enchilada folks…. Zone Alarm Security Suite…with all the bells & whisles. Once again…thank you, you’re a very smart man.
Hi, Never in my life I thought I’d find a solution for CPU over usage on a blog…
Thanks, it worked.
I’m curious what people are doing to “solve the problem” if it’s not the e-mail. Switching to free? Just waiting for 5 minutes?
Your fix worked great!
I noticed that vsmon.exe (I have the FREE ZoneAlarm) was the SECOND heaviest consumer of RAM on my system. But by far the big pig was FireFox, which, testing revealed, was also the culprit behind my sporadic continuous 100% CPU usage. More than once I’ve had to shut down FireFox in order to regain control of my system — and this with nothing exotic going on, just a couple or three tabs open (and idle) for news and/or blog sites.
I’m back to using IE for the time being, since it seems to avoid this. This bums me out, because I much prefer the FireFox browser. I hope this is something that Mozilla can fix soon.
My CPU started running 100% and under the programs list nearly all of that was used by vsmon.exe. I found this webpage and figured it must have something to do with ZoneAlarm. I also noticed that when it would start running 100% ZoneAlarm would have a small download picture on the icon. I uninstalled ZoneAlarm free addition and then installed it again and it solved the problem. I noticed the problem starting near the time that I downloaded the update for Vista (I assume it is not a necessary update unless, of course, you are running Vista, which I am not) so I am planning not to install the Vista compatible update. It has been a few weeks and the problem is gone.
Josh,
ZoneAlarm (free edition, at least) seems to update itself automatically every once in a while (hence the appearance of the “download” icon). When it does, it’s an incredible resource hog. There doesn’t appear to be any way to disable this behavior. When you re-installed it, did you use a fresh download? If so, that’s presumably why this behavior stopped — you got the latest version.
Most likely you’ll see the auto-download (and the attendant resource-hogging) again in the future. I’ve learned to live with it. It doesn’t happen often, and never lasts for very long.
Im using v7.0.337.000 and the problem persists even with mail checking disabled. Only incoming mail check was enabled when I noticed the high cycles (I have a CPU resource meter on my XP desktop). At the time I was attaching a zip file over webmail with Firefox.
After the 8MB attachment upload, I disabled incoming mail check – like outgoing. I sent another mail, this time a powerpoint file, and the problem slowly returned. The vsmon process initially was around 17%, but gradually increased to about 67% by the time the 2MB upload completed. Had it been a larger file, vsmon would have eventually crept all the way up, taking all free cycles with it.
I’ll do a clean uninstall then reinstall and report back.
Just thanks! that mail-protect was on for me aswell.
thanks for all the good info. Still not sure how to get rid of it, and, we do have Outlook Express. Is there an option to vsmon? We do have AVG. Will that cover?
Thanks a ton,System Idle Process was losing a war with that thing 😦
appreciate it.
I have 3 systems all running the latest Zone Alarm under the same 3 machine license:
2 “older” Intel machines with XP Home Ed – No vsmon problems, ever.
1 Intel Core 2 Duo with XP Pro – constant vsmon problems
I think this might be a Core Duo problem
nice article mate…was of a lot of help to me 🙂
i came from google too 😛
There’s a ZoneAlarm forum post that states that the CPU usage can be caused by ZoneAlarm monitoring local (LAN) traffic, not just Internet traffic. The person who made the post said that one way to diagnose what’s going on is to go into the Services applet and disable each service, one at a time, until the CPU usage drops to normal. In his case, he found it was caused by (I think) some communication between his PC and a networked printer.
My situation is a lot stranger. I found that when I had my Tivo Server service running, CPU usage was normal, but if I *stopped* the service, zlclient.exe and vsmon.exe would use nearly 100% of the CPU. God knows why.
This fix saved me from a windows reinstall!!!
Point well made especially to newer users. Always check to find out what is using your resources. I am more specifically referring to going to ‘run’, typing in ‘ msconfig’ putting a dot in selective startup and then click on Startup tab. Carefully begin finding out what you can eliminate. If I never did this I’d have 45 boxes checked instead of 9. Many programs you use do not need to be hogging the computer so they can impress you with a faster start up. Best wishes you more ‘resourceful’ computing. Ron
2 “older” Intel machines with XP Home Ed – No vsmon problems, ever.
1 Intel Core 2 Duo with XP Pro – constant vsmon problems
Interesting that you mention that, I noticed my XP Home Ed never has the problem either. My XP Professional is still out.
Hey I had the same problem… Vsmon was taking 98% of my three gig memory. I went into the task manager and killed the process tree for vsmon. When true vector started again… it began like it does normaly. This was simple and it worked for me.
Well I also have the problem with vsmon.exe hanging up my computer for 2 plus minutes whenever I conmect to the internet (IE ver 6) for the first time after a computer startup. It’s been a problem for at least about 3 months. I did not have this problem when I first installed Zone Alarm.
I have shut every ZA mail protection off (inbound; otbound; and junk e-mail) shut down and restarted. Nothing has changed – the cpu usage is still robbed of 99% power for 2 minutes, at the first internet connection.
I will not be renewing my subscription of ZoneAlarm when due in June.
Great! Seeming as we’ve only got about 6.5GB left on our C drive that helps the CPU spped up heaps, great post.
Thanks again,
Sean
Thanks a lot, that ease my laptop’s burden a lot. Now the respond is better and faster.
awesome tip geek, I already had the email off and was still overwhelmed, tried your tip and am only using about 1/3 of the usage I was using up. thanks
I had a new copy of zona alarm and re installed my OS. ZA still used way too much memory and made my computer useless. I triedd a few things including reinstalling and reinstalling the OS but only gets worse. I looked at some of the ideas here and they didnt work well. I guess I didn’t jump through enough hoops for ZA. Why bother???? I just bought a new copy of norton and I’m on my way again.
The vsmon reared its ugly head on my machine it took a little while and a couple of reboots, but I finally found what was causing it. Windows automatic updates. Must be some kind of installer client or something that multiple software makers use for windows. Don’t know if it helps anyone, but look for the auto update tray icon if you’re having trouble.
Thanks. I fed up with this vsmon.exe. Now fixed. 🙂
Thanks buddy, i obviously had the same problem and your page is the first one i came to after googling vsmon.exe , so you been a super duper huge help….so thank you thank you thank you.
This fix helped. I disabled mail protection as suggested. Patched XP to latest version. Upgraded ZoneAlarm to latest version. Now, very brief vsmon activity and Scanning process activity at first re-boot (let it finish). Now everything is normal (for now).
hi thanks lot and saving my CPU resources
This seems to be the reference page for this problem ;o)
I had the same issue when running version 7.0.737. I upgraded today to 7.0.470 and vsmon remains “quiet” when I started my internet activity instead of eating 50% of my CPU.
I found that when the inbox in hotmail is open, or while on msn, that the cpu usage shot to 100%. Any other webste is ok. Seems its something to do with windows live.
Great tip! I ran into the same issue – 100% usage. Despaired for a bit until Google pointed me here – thanks.
I’ve got this problem, here is my solution.
My ZASS runs at startup without causing any problem. However, as soon as my browser tries to access any site, vsmon starts and grabs all the spare cycles of the CPU. The real problem is that you don’t know what is happening, and it appears your system is frozen. Waiting for vsmon to finish scanning seems like a very long time and clicking on anything has no effect, leading in many cases to people re-booting.
Here’s what to do to make the wait acceptable. After connecting to the internet, but before running your browser, run the Task Manager (right click on task bar and select), click on the Performance tab to get a graph of CPU activity and stats. Run your browser and click on any site, or what I do is to do a Google query without any data, and vsmon will start as soon as internet access is requested. You can then see this activity on the performance graph, so you know what is happening. the Task Manager will continue running even with vsmon scanning, provided you don’t change anything. Seeing what is happening makes the wait much more acceptable, and when the performance graph drops to near zero, you know vsmon is finished and you can close the Task Manager and continue.
It is a pain to wait while vsmon scans your system, but seeing what is happening is much better than waiting for a dead screen to come alive again.
Task manager works OK but Process Explorer is better and more comprehensive. You can download it here .. it’s free: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx I have it loaded constantly and by doing so you’re able to monitor everything that is happening on and to your system. Just a good alternative to Task Manager.
Hi there! Iv landed here via google (suprise suprise) becuase when i tried to upload vids to youtube, my computer would freeze, not upload anything and generally give up on life. This happened over and over again, each time I had to SWITCH off pc and start over. I eventually realised it was vsom.exe. after googling it and finding the 1st fix (disabling email function & restarting) nothing happened (ie same problem) I looked into the second fix (below) but came to a dead end because i am unsure as what to “uncheck”… Iv found the service in the service list no problem, but i cannon see any box to uncheck? (cannot see warming”ok”)…nothing like that, just automatic, manual & disable… someone please help, im losing the plot here 😦
——————————————————-
On July 28, 2007 at 3:29 am geek Said:
i found the solution (zone alarm pro)
go to command => msconfig => services => truevector internetmonitor (manufracture zone labs,LLC) uncheck => apply => on the warming “ok” => reboot and login as admin now vsmon.exe takes around 26.344kb of your memory
spyware & email protection are on !
ha, been pissing me off for weeks now, then I had the bright idea to google it, man I gotta do this more often, lol
thanks for the info, dropped my cpu usage from 100 right down to bout 25, with all my pigs going.
I couldn’t figure out how 2gigs of ram and an athlon 3600 could be so bloody bogged all the time! lol
great stuff, I like zonealaem, but it shouldn’t adjust you settings because you take an update.
thanks again!
duder/the dude/el duderino/his dudeness(if you not into the whole brevity thing)
Very informative, thanks for the heads up–I was wondering about this process myself. Well done!
I’ve fallen out of favour with ZoneAlarm recently… yes I too bought the Pro version and have been disappointed. These vsmon.exe problems have caused me a lot of trouble too. I’d suggest ditching ZA Pro and go with something lighter, like Comodo V2.4
Thanks for the tip. Solved my problem immediately!
After installing v 7.0.483 my machine just froze. I wasted hours trying to fix it until I found this post. Disabling the in/outbound email monitor seems to fix the problem. Thanks!
Thanks for this tip. I had a heck of a time trying to uninstall ZA and this at least gets me this far. On to another program… Everyone’s assistance much appreciated.
Just to say: thanks for the posts everyone it really helped me out.
My CPU usage went from 90% to 100% after checking the process in the task manager i found the vs.mon.exe jumping to the top of the list at precisely the same time the CPU usage peaked.
I uninstalled zone alarm (free edition) and now my computer runs perfect.
It must have been caused by the recent zone alarm update. I dont know what zonealarm are playing at but they have just lost a user.
Best advise: dont use zonealarm, use the built in file wall on internet explorer 7 and if you use zonealarm for antivirus etc, just use something else such as AVG.
Hope this helps other users who were spending hours doing virus scans and disk defrags!!
Thanks… this was killing performance on my machine!!!
yes! thank you so much. my computer is working now.
[…] – bookmarked by 4 members originally found by moskrin on 2008-08-12 Comment on Vsmon.exe chewing up the CPU by paul https://jeeezelouise.wordpress.com/2006/12/15/vsmonexe-chewing-up-the-cpu/#comment-1785 – […]
Thanks.
Happened to me too. Seems that this was a problem one time before and it was the same thing. But Zone Alarm has been a good application for me and you can’t beat the price.
how so many people can claim this ‘fix’ works is beyond me. maybe it depends which ZA release is installed on their system??? all i know is that disabling the e-mail protection had no effect whatsoever. vsmon still rockets to 50% and holds for 5-6 minutes, so this is a useless suggestion in my case.
What if you are using Outlook Exspress? I paid for the Mail Safe Monitoring and Zone Alarm is very Arragent about this issue and will not give refunds or free phone tech time to resolve it! So it means to me that they are aware of the problem and cant fix it so they are ducking for cover. There support service is horrible! Will never use there products again, they make me worry about the health of my pc buy running away from this, and my computer running so hot I cant even conduct buisness on it! Shame on you ZA!
After suffering a corrupt registry that caused me to reinstall XP (pro), I installed MS’s UPHClean, a utility to clear registry connections at shutdown. Checking Event Viewer (r-click My Comp/Manage) showed vsmon to be a problem according to UPHClean:
UPHClean
The following handles in user profile hive ***** have been closed because they were preventing the profile from unloading successfully:
vsmon.exe (1116)
HKCU (0x6bc)
HKCU (0x730)
I have a feeling this is what caused the corrupt registry…
Anyways, thanks for the tip. I’ve turned Mailsafe off.
I had the same troubles everyone else had for the last few days, I have a local email account I cannot turn off email protection and I’ve been reading all the messages on the net. Here’s what I did that was not mentioned. I noticed that this happened right after the latest update of my ZASS, even though Zonelabs try to deflect the blame to a possible worm. I run my undates and scans regularly without fail or incident. Up to now I have been very happy with ZA. I used their AV/Antispyware for months and no infecttions upto the update. All of a sudden they claim it might be an infection and not their program?
Here’s what I did:
1)Restart so I can get desktop to run for a little while without locking.
2)Run their AV/antispy to verify computer is clean.
3)Ran additional AV/antispyware scans downloadable off the net to triple check. (have to restart each time before vsmon.exe starts up again)
4)when I feel everything is safe, I downloaded and installed a highly recommended program from downloads.com called CCleaner (its free and has higher rating). I noticed a lot of ads by registry fixing programs when surfing for an answer.
5)I ran CCleaner twice(2 minute). Fixed the problem. So far so good. I don’t think ZA should deflect the blame to some worm that their program should have been protecting us from all this time and not give us a good solution. It took me days to figure it out and their tech support never replied to my question. Bad service especially since they sent email confirming that they received my question. I am posting this in hopes that it will help others avoid all the hassel I went through with an updated solution. 9/13/08
i’m starting to detest ZA. Same problem with vsmon.exe and zlclient.exe even AFTER reinstalling ZAS 7.xxx AND running cc cleaner twice!!!
thanks alot i needed that =D
Hello!
well i have same problem with vsmon.exe which eating up 100% processor usage when ever i connect to internet. Usually it takes up to 24 minutes to become normal.
its really annoying. ZA offer no solution for this problem. on this forum i found lots of suggestions but… non worked…
still looking for solution….
using ZoneAlarm with AntiSpyware 7
Avast professional Antivirus 4.8
Windows Xp sp2
P4 2.4Ghz with 1GB Ram.
Thank you! I had the same high usage which really slowed my computer. This is a big help.
This really helped me a lot!!
Thank u very much 😀
I want to thank everyone for the comments on this site. I had this problem and I WAS using Zone Alarm. I shut off the incoming email scan as was suggested in previous comments, but it didn’t work. My computer would freeze up when I used Firefox and tried to visit other sites, especially Amazon.com. I gave up and uninstalled Zone Alarm Security Suite and installed Avast Anti-Virus (free version) and my computer no longer freezes up on me; the first thing I did was to order a new hard drive from Amazon.com for another computer I own. Once again, thanks for the earlier comments as I knew I wasn’t alone and others were willing to offer assistance.
DITTO
Thanks for all this info. I have just had a horrendous time starting with a new license key not being accepted. ZA online help suggested uninstall and reinstall the version of Security Suite I had just purchased – now it won’t even run it – I just get a message saying “Could not execute the external program C:\window\system32\zonelabs\vsmon.exe. Don’t really want to phone them – costly from France so will be ditching it and using other free anti-virus. Had used ZA for 7 years – such a shame they can’t support.
Years later and you’re still helping people out! I had the same problem.
But I didn’t expect it when I was trying to find out why Notepad++ 5.1.2 was crashing.
Also, a bit redundant to have AVG free’s email scanning and ZA’s scanning simultaneously.
I googled it to not really knowing what it was. So thanks for the info. Your site shows up at the top of the list for this search! 🙂 (vmon.exe)
Had constant crashing problems, usually on boot up and causing constant reboots. Figured out that ZA & vsmon file was the problem and search led here. It might be the ugly fix but I found that switching off the option that starts ZA automatically on reboot has done wonders. I just start it up manually after Windows has loaded and before I start anything else up. Cpu usage way down, machine much quicker and no crashes yet.
I had ZA for many years. Then I got problems and uninstalled it. Still problems (CPU rocket to roof)
Found out that vsmon.exe causing it.
So what I´m trying to say is; Even if you uninstall the mailscanner or whatever, and even when you uninstall ZA all together, vsmon is still arond causing CPU to rocket. So, what to do? Is a ZA-file interacting with the system in a necesarry way anyhow? Even if ZA is gone?
who knows!
Anyway, by uncheck the “true vector”(zonelabs) box in msconfig the cpu works fine.(and I hope forever)
Thanx for the tip.
Urax Freja/Stockholm,Sweden
This site is so cool! 🙂 I bought ZoneAlarm, and now I find out that the guy who wrote it, went to a competitor (MS)? Frankly, I’d be afraid he’d intentionally cause problems with ZoneAlarm, now a competetor. But then I don’t trust anyone. Hey!? Did you hear that voice? Over there, behind me, did you hear it?
Well i tried having sex with vsmon.exe but it didn’t work.
So, although the users of this program have been aware of this issue since 2006, the makers have done nothing to resolve the issue. In my free version, email protection IS disabled. To me, this means that the product is not worth having, so I am un-installing it, and installing another. I would love to hear what Zone Alarm, themselves, have to say about it, but seeing as they can’t be bothered to answer any queries, I rate their product and service at 0 out of 10, and am certain that most thinking individuals will do the same!
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So glad to stumble upon this blog. VSMON.EXE consumed 50-100% of resources. Uninstalled ZA on all PCs in our office. Problem totally solved. Thanks.
I persisted with Zone Alarm for 3 years – biggest waste of time and money (this from a former Panda Antivirus customer, the AV that blocks Windows Update!) and, well, unless you persist in poking your nose into places of ill-repute, the standard Windows firewall and Security Essentials will keep you safe without any of the system-hogging the major scammers…sorry, AV/Firewall vendors…are known for.