Win XP guru's...how do you.......

you know when you are at the login screen and it tells you that you have unread e-mails from Hotmail. Any way to turn that off or change it to inform you of unread e-mails from Outlook Express?

also, since i installed XP, Zone alarm won't remember my program permissions. Every time I have to Allow IE, Outlook, MS Help, etc. permission to connect to web. getting very annoying. Wasn't like this in Win 98. And yes, I do check the box that says "Remember this next time."

any help would be fantastic. Thanks

For your email thing:

You might be able to remove the Windows Messenger module from OE. Not sure though. I know you can do it with Outlook, but not sure about OE. This will prevent OE from opening WinMessenger when it opens.

ZoneAlarm:
What kind of internet connection do you have? If you have broadband? If so, do you have a router or some other type of gateway/firewall? You may not need ZoneAlarm. Try uninstalling ZoneAlarm, then reinstalling it after a reboot. Also, have you tried to make the rules manually?

Don't know about the ZoneAlarm part, but your email question made me think. I renamed the messenger folder so the damn thing can't start, then when I rebooted the logon screen displayed the total number of unopened emails from OE. So, apparently if messenger isn't installed XP will automatically display the number of new emails in OE. Go figure. If you want to keep messenger installed(and why would you??), there must be a registry setting you could hunt down to make it display messages from OE, but good luck finding it.

Or... maybe it just worked because the OE account is a Hotmail account... not sure.

Maybe this will shed some light on it. Don't know if it will help.

Overview of the Mail Notification Display on the Windows XP Welcome Screen (Q304148)

Good luck.

let me guess...do you shut down by pressing the power button??

what you do is use zone alrm till you set permissions for all your progs, then exit out of it(zone arlarm), then restart it again...then reboot and see if it sticks

I had the exact same ZoneAlarm problem with XP. So I'm running Norton Internet Security now. It works fine and dandy.

Zone Alarm is great but notorious for forgetting your settings.

Check out sygate's personal firewall. It's effective.

I second Sygate. Quality product.