Well, did I have a rude realization this evening. I went to do some work on a web service project and Visual Studio wouldn't load the web service project.

Okay, maybe IIS isn't running correctly or I've screwed something up. I try some other /localhost/.../.aspx sites and they don't run either. Restart IIS to no avail.

Then I realize that I just upgraded ZoneAlarm yesterday (or was it two days ago?), so I shut it off temporarily. Ah, now everything is working. Time to fiddle with the settings in ZoneAlarm and figure out what isn't correct.

I tried just about every setting there was and found nothing to work. Finally I got frustrated enough to go looking for support. When I use their help system, it mentions that ZA isn't compatible with Win2K Server... I'm running WinXP. Then I try the forums and search for IIS... Oh boy, there you go.

I didn't find one person running IIS on a local system that been able to keep ZA 5.0 going. A couple even claimed that this was a prominent beta issue that has gone unaddressed.

I've now downgraded to version 4.5 until this problem is resolved. What a shame, too... I like ZoneAlarm. Hopefully, they will get it resolved soon.