I began having system problems caused by my C:\ drive being full. An examination of the issue led me to the folder c:\SandBlastBackup\ where I found a large number of files, mostly 4 GB each. I traced that to a Zone Alarm install.
After uninstalling Zone Alarm in Windows 7 using control panel and 'programs and features' in the usual way, I noticed the files did not go away and SandBlast Agent continued to run, meaning the uninstall was defective.
All tech support requests by live chat from Zone Alarm and the vendor that actually produces SandBlast Agent were incompetent.
I finally located a program in the following folder named uninst.exe which displayed the Zone Alarm logo/icon. I was running explorer in privileged mode at the time, but that may not be required. If it is, open a command window as an administrator and run the copy of explorer.exe by typing c:\windows\explorer.exe OR with the explorer window go to c:\Windows, and right click on c:\Windows\explorer.exe and select run as administrator. Navigate to the following location and run uninst.exe that shows the Zone Alarm icon:
C:\Program Files (x86)\CheckPoint\Endpoint Security\TPCommon\Cipolla
This uninstall program offered to uninstall everything related to the original Zone Alarm install. It takes a few minutes, but it did work removing SandblastBackup and all of its contents. I had by this time tried all of the usual tricks - privileged terminal, attributes etc...
In my humble opinion Zone Alarm is sloppy software, based on good ideas that are poorly implemented. Under no circumstances would a competent design team distribute a program that chewed up an entire SSD on the C:\ drive of windows for any reason. This kind of sloppy programming died in the 90's. I can only conclude that if Zone Alarm has no process or procedures in place to prevent delivering products so obviously destructive to the target that there may be significant vulnerabilities elsewhere in the program(s).
Having restored well over 120 GB to my SSD I replaced Zone Alarm (with another product) and continued working. Sandblast is now a thing of the past.
After uninstalling Zone Alarm in Windows 7 using control panel and 'programs and features' in the usual way, I noticed the files did not go away and SandBlast Agent continued to run, meaning the uninstall was defective.
All tech support requests by live chat from Zone Alarm and the vendor that actually produces SandBlast Agent were incompetent.
I finally located a program in the following folder named uninst.exe which displayed the Zone Alarm logo/icon. I was running explorer in privileged mode at the time, but that may not be required. If it is, open a command window as an administrator and run the copy of explorer.exe by typing c:\windows\explorer.exe OR with the explorer window go to c:\Windows, and right click on c:\Windows\explorer.exe and select run as administrator. Navigate to the following location and run uninst.exe that shows the Zone Alarm icon:
C:\Program Files (x86)\CheckPoint\Endpoint Security\TPCommon\Cipolla
This uninstall program offered to uninstall everything related to the original Zone Alarm install. It takes a few minutes, but it did work removing SandblastBackup and all of its contents. I had by this time tried all of the usual tricks - privileged terminal, attributes etc...
In my humble opinion Zone Alarm is sloppy software, based on good ideas that are poorly implemented. Under no circumstances would a competent design team distribute a program that chewed up an entire SSD on the C:\ drive of windows for any reason. This kind of sloppy programming died in the 90's. I can only conclude that if Zone Alarm has no process or procedures in place to prevent delivering products so obviously destructive to the target that there may be significant vulnerabilities elsewhere in the program(s).
Having restored well over 120 GB to my SSD I replaced Zone Alarm (with another product) and continued working. Sandblast is now a thing of the past.