Portable Apps loads but the apps won't launch!

Greetings, everyone. I just downloaded and installed PA and some additional apps only to have nothing work. I couldn't believe it! I found that by using a file manager and going into the application's folders I could get Sudoku and ClamWin to run, but ClamWin couldn't update. Then I noticed a comment in one of the support forums about firewalls, and I decided to shut down ZoneAlarm. This solved the problem and I could update ClamWin and run all of the other apps. ZoneAlarm seems to be very aggressive (depending on how aggressive you make it, I guess...) Hope this helps someone like me, who spent more than a little time F-ing around, trying to figure out what the problem was! I'm a happy camper now... ☺