The Best Free Firewalls

[vdesignlabs 0]

Hi Friends,I have been doing a small research on good firewalls and found out that the free ones are as good as the paid ones.The one that particularly impressed me was online armor. I installed it and and had some problems with connecting to the internet. Its not because of any complexity of the software or some lack on its part, just some compatibility problem with a tonne of software that I have installed in my pc. So if its an amazingly good firewall that you want, then online armor is the one for you.The second best I found to be comodo firewall pro v3. Its as good as online armor and it is this that I am currently running on my pc. The best thing I liked about it was the simple wizard like configuration that it did on the first install. So unlike the regular firewalls, which after you install you will have to do that "allow always" for about a 100 programs, this one asked me only about 5 times(as it has a preconfigured library of the safe software, so it doesn't have to ask explicitly). Plus it can take care of all the malwares too. The only grouse I have is that it consumes a lot of resources if you enable to watch out for malware too........Hope this has been of help.....Cheers!!

[wutske 0]

It's the first time I've heard about online armor, but from what I read I'll probably never test it. I firewall shouldn't have compatibility problems with any software, that would be like writing an anti-virus program that can't scan half the amount of executables on your computer. Comodo is imho the best free firewall available for the moment, it indeed lacks the annoyance factor that many firewalls have (that is if you disable the defense+ system that asks for too many things) but it's a bit hard to configure at first.Altough I always want to mention Sygate Personal Firewall, it's still the best free firewall available that doesn't support Vista. The only (and I realy mean only) downside is that it has some problems with Mercury Messenger , the firewalls GUI freezes as soon as I launch it.

[vdesignlabs 0]

Hi Wutske,I would like to clarify something. My PC is in a small mess right now. I keep installing a lot of software and so I have to keep reinstalling like once in 6 months to keep it in ship shape. And now its time for that routine reinstall. Problem is it takes me a day to install and configure all my software to the way I want it, and right now I have so much work that I couldn't do that.But when I do reinstall I will be installing OnlineArmor. Its defences are just too good.............. Plus I had done a check to see if others too are experiencing problems with and it and I couldn't find it. So my case is just an exception. Wutske, try it out. You can always uninstall like how I had done. My problem was that firefox was not able to connect to the internet. Rest everything was working well! And Sygate................ it used to be the greatest firewall some 5 years ago. Now things have progressed so much that it is now one of the least protecting firewalls of all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Cheers!!

[wutske 0]

Hi Wutske,
I would like to clarify something. My PC is in a small mess right now. I keep installing a lot of software and so I have to keep reinstalling like once in 6 months to keep it in ship shape. And now its time for that routine reinstall. Problem is it takes me a day to install and configure all my software to the way I want it, and right now I have so much work that I couldn't do that.

But when I do reinstall I will be installing OnlineArmor. Its defences are just too good.............. Plus I had done a check to see if others too are experiencing problems with and it and I couldn't find it. So my case is just an exception. Wutske, try it out. You can always uninstall like how I had done. My problem was that firefox was not able to connect to the internet. Rest everything was working well!

And Sygate................ it used to be the greatest firewall some 5 years ago. Now things have progressed so much that it is now one of the least protecting firewalls of all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cheers!!

yeah, it's a bit outdated, I know , but it's not a target for hackers eiter ^^ . Anyway, I use a firewall only for outbound connection since I'm always connected to the internet using a router .
I used to have the same problem you described, installing and removing software all the time. The best thing you can do is creating a test environment in VirtualPC, you can install, remove and change as much as you want without it posing problems. The only downside is that you can't active the virtual pc installation, so you'll have to re-install it from time to time (if you create an unattended install iso using nlite than re-installing windows is nothing but a 15 minutes background taks ).

[vdesignlabs 0]

I have never been a fan of virtual pc environments. They never mimic the real thing. I had used vmware for some time and I kept having issues. Finally I felt that it was better and much easier to do whatever you want on the real thing!Installing windows is a breeze. 15 mins, work over.......... Buuuuut, its after that that the real work starts. Installing about a 100 individual programs. Again if it was just click click, no problem. But you have to configure each application one by one. I have got so bugged that nowadays half of installed programs I have converted to standalone programs and store it in a different drive from the xp installation drive.........And hey, at the bottom of your message it says that you are using both sygate and comodo. I don't think running 2 firewalls simultaneously is recommended.........Cheers......

[wutske 0]

I have never been a fan of virtual pc environments. They never mimic the real thing. I had used vmware for some time and I kept having issues. Finally I felt that it was better and much easier to do whatever you want on the real thing!
Installing windows is a breeze. 15 mins, work over.......... Buuuuut, its after that that the real work starts. Installing about a 100 individual programs. Again if it was just click click, no problem. But you have to configure each application one by one. I have got so bugged that nowadays half of installed programs I have converted to standalone programs and store it in a different drive from the xp installation drive.........

And hey, at the bottom of your message it says that you are using both sygate and comodo. I don't think running 2 firewalls simultaneously is recommended.........

Cheers......

If you read my sig completely you probably notices that I have both a computer and a laptop . What kind of issues did you have ? I don't have any problems with virtualpc'07, the only thing that doesn't work is drag&drop because Vista isn't a supported VPC07 host.

[altimit 0]

For firewalls, I generally do not accept incoming connections anyway as there's no reason my computer should be answering any attempts from the Internet. Here, a dedicated hardware firewall handles that, along with my router. To filter outbound connections, my usual preference is ZoneLabs' ZoneAlarm. For testing environments though, it's really very beneficial to have virtual machines (such as Virtual PC or VMWare). My set-up at home has virtual machines for all platforms I develop on, in both 32 and 64-bit variants. This makes it very easy to ensure that the software I write functions correctly in a wide array of set-ups.In your case, vdesignlabs, why not have a standard image of your base installation (i.e. Windows, and the softwares you need), and make an image of that (in, say, Norton Ghost)? In that way, when you need to perform a spring cleaning of your box, just backup your data and restore your base image. Very fast and simple, and you get the same clean results every time. The beauty is that you can apply the image to many computers, and you're assured you have the same environment at hand always, with the same programs, the same set-up, and the same customizations that you require.Give it a thought.

[wutske 0]

For firewalls, I generally do not accept incoming connections anyway as there's no reason my computer should be answering any attempts from the Internet. Here, a dedicated hardware firewall handles that, along with my router. To filter outbound connections, my usual preference is ZoneLabs' ZoneAlarm.
For testing environments though, it's really very beneficial to have virtual machines (such as Virtual PC or VMWare). My set-up at home has virtual machines for all platforms I develop on, in both 32 and 64-bit variants. This makes it very easy to ensure that the software I write functions correctly in a wide array of set-ups.

In your case, vdesignlabs, why not have a standard image of your base installation (i.e. Windows, and the softwares you need), and make an image of that (in, say, Norton Ghost)? In that way, when you need to perform a spring cleaning of your box, just backup your data and restore your base image. Very fast and simple, and you get the same clean results every time. The beauty is that you can apply the image to many computers, and you're assured you have the same environment at hand always, with the same programs, the same set-up, and the same customizations that you require.

Give it a thought.

the downside of a ghost vs. a fresh install is that you end up with outdated software after a while.

[altimit 0]

Hi wutske,Yes, that's true, unfortunately. But, a price I personally would be willing to pay for the convenience.What prior companies I have been with do is issue a standard image every quarter or so. While this may not be an option for a casual user, it does solve the problem of outdated installations. Of course, if you find that the software in your image needs a bit of updating, you can opt to do a clean install of the OS as well as the newer version of your applications, and then make a new image out of that.This is incredibly useful if you find yourself needing to restore often. In fact, this was the case I was in before I extensively used virtual machines. By using base images, we were always certain that the environment was clean and was in an expected state prior to testing software for release.

[The Pixel Coder 0]

Well, for the home user, ZoneAlarm is in my opinion definitely th safest (even the free version).But since my router already has an internal firewall, i just activated th winXP sp2 firewall...

[PerHapsYouSeen 0]

ZoneAlarm Firewall is strong but it inject it's code too much into my system.I'm now using Comodo Firewall and love it. Easy to use and uninstall. A troublesome is the setup does not have upgrade option, it will uninstall the older version and then install the new one, if you don't backup your setting, you will lost it. Of course it won't happen if you use the automatic update.