W7 Firewall good?

[JerryM]

I have been using NIS on my laptop, and have been very satisfied with it. However, I just wanted to play with something else, and have put on Avast free, my old "go to" AV.
I am using the W7 firewall, and have the impression from post here that it is a good firewall, except it does not offer out bound protection.

I am not really concerned with outbound as I have never had a situation that it was needed.

So what is the opinion of another firewall, preferably free, that is better than the W7 firewall?
Thanks,
Jerry

[Cudni]

It is a good fw and it offers both inbound and outbound protection although to some it might appear as not as easy to configure as other 3rd party fw. See what other firewalls member like
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=315487

[JerryM]

Originally Posted by Cudni

It is a good fw and it offers both inbound and outbound protection although to some it might appear as not as easy to configure as other 3rd party fw. See what other firewalls member like
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=315487

Thanks, Cudni.
I should have mentioned that I have a router.
Jerry

[Kirk Reynolds]

Originally Posted by JerryM

I am using the W7 firewall, and have the impression from post here that it is a good firewall, except it does not offer out bound protection.

No, Win7 firewall will not prompt you when an app is trying to make an outbound connection, but as Cudni stated, it does offer out bound protection. You can deny all outbound connections that don't match a rule and create your rules just like other firewalls.

If you're going with Avast free and Win7 firewall, then I wouldn't install the Avast Web Shield (enables all traffic sent via proxy) if I were you. It renders the Win7 firewall (as well as some other 3rd party firewalls that I know of) useless.

[alexandrud]

There are some solutions for notifications for outbound blocked connections. One of them is Windows Firewall Control and another is Windows Firewall Notifier. TinyWall works also with Windows Firewall, but it does not provide such notifications.

You can find topics for each of them on this forum.

[JerryM]

Thanks, guys.
Jerry

[itman]

If you're going with Avast free and Win7 firewall, then I wouldn't install the Avast Web Shield (enables all traffic sent via proxy) if I were you. It renders the Win7 firewall (as well as some other 3rd party firewalls that I know of) useless.

If you leave WIN 7 firewall in default mode which is to allow all outbound traffic, Avast web shield will work fine.

If you enable outbound protection on the WIN 7 firewall, you have to do the following if you want to use Avast's web shield:

You need to create two firewall rules for avastsvc.exe to allow HTTP traffic from Avast web shield proxy server:

Allow outbound - TCP - from any local port - to remote IP 127.0.0.1, port 12080.
Allow outbound - TCP - from any local port - to remote port 80.

Then for the existing HTTP(tcp port 80, 8080, etc.) rule for your browser, change from Allow to Deny.

The above rules will force all TCP port 80 outbound traffic from your browser to be redirected though Avast's web shield.

Note: If for some reason you disable or uninstall Avast or it's web shield, you will have to change the above Deny rule for HTTP traffic for your browser back to Allow. If you don't do that, you won't be able to connect to the Internet.

[cppgenius]

Hi JerryM

From all the firewalls I've reviewed so far, I find Outpost Firewall Pro to be the best. You will be glad to know that they have a free version as well. The free version is actually an Internet Security suite and not a stand-alone firewall.