Conflict with Zone Alarm Firewall without antivirus

I've run ZA for years. I added bitdefender free and had no issues. Recently in the last few days something has happened. My system slowed down and seemed to be overworking. It turned out that there was a message coming up repeatedly that bitdefender was blocking the creation of blablahblah.bak in ProgramData\CheckPoint\Endpoint Security\Threat Emulation\Backup. And it kept fighting with something on this.

As well at this time there seemed to be something reproducing on my system. I disinfected a lot of files in windows/temp. Claimed 6000+. Redid the scan and found no issues.

Checked all the files under the zone alarm folder and no virus. Since bitdefender was still not allowing the creation of the file and as best I could determine za does use a .bak file in that directory, I exempted the directory. Then I notice a day later that bitdefender isn't running. And it won't start. Bitdefender says services not available an the protection is turned off. Uninstalled it and reinstalled and install failed.

Looked for previous notes and only something from 2013. Which I will try uninstall za and install bit then put za back in service.

Best guess is that it has something to do with their ransomware stuff but not sure why it suddenly starting having issue and not sure why it would be running since I don't have the antivirus version of it.

And yes I saw the help section that said bit won't run with other programs, but it has been so not sure on that.

Anyone run both? Any issues?