---
title: "Completely removing ZoneAlarm"
description: "<p>I use ZoneAlarm Security Suite on my laptop (yes, it’s running Windows…) since its a cheap and nice complete suite that has a firewall, an anti-virus and anti-spyware software plus a lot of other stuff I rarely use (IM Security and the likes).</p>
<p>I have it for about a year and a couple of months and I saw in the <a style="font-weight: bold" href="http://forums.zonelabs.org/">support forums</a> that there is a beta release of version 7.0.</p>"
doc_version: "1"
last_updated: "2017-06-02"
date: 2006-12-25
tags: [tip, trick, Uninstall, ZoneAlarm]
canonical: "https://eran.sandler.co.il/2006/12/25/completely-removing-zonealarm/"
---

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I use ZoneAlarm Security Suite on my laptop (yes, it&#8217;s running Windows&#8230;) since its a cheap and nice complete suite that has a firewall, an anti-virus and anti-spyware software plus a lot of other stuff I rarely use (IM Security and the likes).

I have it for about a year and a couple of months and I saw in the <a style="font-weight: bold" href="http://forums.zonelabs.org/">support forums</a> that there is a beta release of version 7.0.

Since I have a couple of standing issues with ZoneAlarm Security Suite, mainly its pro-active anti virus that keeps on hogging the machine at boot time and another problem with <a style="font-weight: bold" href="http://www.cygwin.com/">Cygwin</a> (it&#8217;s a known issue) I thought I&#8217;d give it a try.

It worked relatively well, but it had more than a few major issues (one of which is that it started to say the beta has expired &#8211; also a known issue). I&#8217;ve decided to go back to my 6.5.x version.

At this point I started to really get pissed off. It seems that a normal uninstall of ZoneAlarm Security Suite will not uninstall the license and since the beta require a special beta license my 6.5.x version didn&#8217;t work and said it has expired and wouldn&#8217;t let me put my previous valid serial number.

After digging in the forums a bit more it seems there is a secret key for doing that just.
  
If you add two parameters to the uninstall executable it will clear the license information. Just run this from the command line or &#8220;Start -> Run&#8221; (don&#8217;t forget to change that path if you installed it to a different location):

> &#8220;C:\Program Files\Zone Labs\ZoneAlarm\zauninst.exe&#8221; /clean /rmlicense

That is the magic line that will fix all of your problems.

Now I know they don&#8217;t want people partying on their 15-days evaluation of the full Security Suite but there is no reason that I will have to dig to find out how to cleanly uninstall it. What about other people who are less technology oriented than me?

I would expect, like in any uninstall program, that the nice people at <a style="font-weight: bold" href="http://www.zonelabs.com/">ZoneLabs</a> will not leave any trace of there program <span style="font-weight: bold">including my license information</span>.

Don&#8217;t leave crap on my machine if it&#8217;s not really necessary.