It is possible that Zone Alarm is not a good choice for Win98, as it is no longer updated for those systems. I've heard Agnitum's Outpost Firewall is good (I use it) but the free version is NEVER updated, so I wonder... At any rate, Microsoft no longer offers security updates for 98, and it's crazy to use IE without them. Time to update your hardware maybe?
Pookey, October 2006