Some information before I give my problem.

Toshiba Premade Laptop: A135-S4417
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Preminum

OK well, just got my laptop back from Toshiba after an unrelated problem. They wiped my hard drive, and it came with crappy 30-day trial McAfee. No big deal, I uninstalled that along with the other trial games that came with this. I then installed AVG, no problems there. Install Spybot S&D, no problems, and Ad-Aware SE Personal, no problems.

I thought all was well, then I realized that I was running Windows Firewall....ugh. So I went to install ZoneAlarm, the free version. As the install was going on, towards the end, the computer just went BSoD on me. No big deal, I just restarted and installed again. This time, it went to 100% and then BSoD AGAIN. OK OK, something is wrong. Before I do anything, I see if I can get the computer started normally. No dice, just BSoD. So I restart it, start safemode, and uninstall ZoneAlarm from there. Then I start my computer back up like I usually do, and it works fine. It made 3 dumps after all those restarts and what not.

What I need now, is a good Firewall, as ZoneAlarm seems to give me ****. If you can devise a scheme to install ZoneAlarm without BSoD constantly, Great! But for now, I need a firewall. Advice?

Edit: Does Verizon FiOS router give you a hardware firewall? If it does, do I really need to install a software firewall?

A hardware firewall will always win over a software one. What model of FiOS router do you have?