Zone Alarm and Internet connectivity

[#1]

Up till late last night, I have had no problem logging on to the net....... I am using Windows XP with SP3 installed.  Zone Alarm has been installed for as far back as I can remember (and updated)  Also running AVG 8 free.
Today I logged in to get my emails in the morning about 0800 as usual. Logged out, closed down, and went out.  Has been raining all day here. Came back home about 1600 and did some printing jobs, then decided I may need a new cartridge very soon, so had better get on the net and order it.... I tried for ages, kept getting a "server has timed out" message, and also "internet explorer could not connect".... I normally use Firefox, but have IE7 as stand by.
Thinking the net may be down due to weather.... (?) I carried on printing, then decided to give the wife`s laptop some welly, and see if it connected..... She is running on Vista Home Basic..... connected first time.  (both machines are using the same wireless router)  Both machines show excellent signal, and connected.Went back to mine.... actually alongside this one, but it still gave out the above messages.
Then I disabled ZA  and it connected no problem........ so downloaded the latest free download, and installed it, went through the install procedure, and lo and behold, on re-booting.... got the above messages again.
Any offers of a solution Please ?

[#2]

http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,66405.0.html
Microsoft Patch Tuesday has affected ZoneAlarm.  Moving the security slider to Medium should temporarily fix it, but more details in the other thread
Lockinating in favour of other thread to keep everything in one place
B.

[#3]

mod:note
There are a few other thread today on this very subject.
For example;
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,66405.0/topicseen.html

[#4]

Mod fight 
Sorry Bary, you may have posted first, but I locked first