Zonealarm help and annoying popups.

A friend of mine has asked me for help on popups that appear on the taskbar when leaving sites. They use AVG, Spybot, and this Zonealarm thing which l nothing about. The taskbar is now showing a black "z" whereas it was in colour before and ANY trusted site l happen to post to them is blocked by Zonealarm.
Apart from suggesting they take up knitting instead, have any of you gurus out there some suggestions for me?
With thanks

PS. Also cannot download the free adaware program from filehippo.com because guess what, Zonealarm blocks the site!

zone alarm will block a lot of sites and stop you doing things and downloading thats why i took it out , take it out you only need 1 antivirus , harry

Harry my main man!
Thanks for that, and what a quick reply. (thanks also for tolerating my ignorance, but this goes a little way in explaining some of their problems).
But when l do a search on zonealarm some sites say it's an "all in one prevention"  package and some sites say it is just a "firewall" package. As l don't know what version they are using, it starts to get confusing as to what it is actually does do!
Again, if they get rid of Zonealarm, use the MS supplied Firewall (which isn't the greatest but adequate) and just use AVG and Spybot, you think this will be sufficient?
Thanks again

[Web moderator]

But when l do a search on zonealarm some sites say it's an "all in one prevention"  package and some sites say it is just a "firewall" package. ]

That's the thing....If it's the antivirus version, then definitely get rid of it. Two antivirus programs can cause problems. If it's the firewall version, then just play around with the settings a bit. Look for something like "popup control" or similar.

no problem willy