Firewall and Hardening Systems

I am curious... I'm still newbies. If I have already a Firewall installed in my pc... then what settings should I choose when using SafeXP and Secure-IT hardening systems w/out affecting my dial-up speed? or what settings should I avoid in SafeXP and Secure-IT to maintain dial-up speed and still updates Windows etc? Are there any possible danger using this two.. coz it disable many things and I didn't even know its details and I only try the recommended settings.

Many tnx

 

SafeXP has a good reputation on this forum, but if you Google it you'll find a lot of reports of it causing problems. Certainly on my PC it made a number of unwanted changes that couldn't be reversed. This was over a year ago, and I'm afraid I can't remember the details.

A couple of months ago I ran Secure It and Harden It. Afterwards I had problems with displaying a website I often visit, the K-Meleon forum. Running those two programmes again to undo the changes had no effect, and I had to use system restore.

Judging from the recommendations for system hardening tools on Wilders, my experiences must be atypical, but I won't touch them again. I suspect they require substantially more knowledge than I have to use them safely.

 

I tried one of the hardening tools mentioned here, I think harden it, and it messed up my system. Forturately I do daily registry backups and was able to recover. So now I stay away from them. Since I do not visit any unsavoury sites it is probably not that necessary for me.

 

I think Harden-It & Secure-It are for more advanced users who have a deeper knowledge of how computers operate. I was part of the way into the setup procedure for one of them when I decided to abort. Didn't have a clue on how the hardened settings would affect the overall performance of my computer, so I quit.

Good thing I did, too.

 

Same here. Harden-It and Secure-It messed my system BIGTIME! I had to format to get back my OS. You have to have a LOT of knowledge to know how to use these tools in a productive manner! So if you dont consider yourself an expert, i suggest you stay away!

 

Harden-it worked well for me however Secure-It made many unwanted changes by default, so I prefer not to use that one. Never had any problems with Harden-It alone though..

 

I've never had a problem using SecureIt or HardenIt with it's default settings, not on my machine or the dozens of others I've installed it on. Any software has the potential to mess things up, however, so it's a very good idea to use something like Erunt, Total Uninstall, or a registry tracer to take a snapshot of your system before making changes (in the case of Total Uninstall or a registry tracer, also making a snapshot afterwards that can make an 'undo' for just the changes made). At the very very least you should make a system restore point, if you use XP.

 

I have to say I agree with Notok on this. I was skeptical at first when I read about these products. However they both do an excellent job imho. Software conflicts happen all the time, and it varies on system to system as to the how and why.

It would be nice to know what your setup was like when you installed Secure-It and Harden-It. I to have not run into any problems at all yet with installing these products.

 

Same here...

 

My gosh!!! I got nervous for what I've heared from several users... I didn't expect it to be that "dangerous" at all coz they look nice and easy to use and their website didn't have any big warnings.

System hardening was I think the first thing I have to do or install before installing other protective programs( I just installed it) but knowing for what I know then, maybe I have to remove it on my system and be confident and trust the other "reliable safer" softwares like ProcessGuard and WinPatrol to protect my pc.

Pls if anyone of you there knows more or have some good or bad experiences w Secure-IT and SafeXP pls post it here so others especially the beginners will be warned. I even felt that my dial-up internet speed slowed down a bit and I cannot update my MS AntiSpyware it can't connect to the server after I set the Secure-IT w its recommended settings and I was confused what should changed w it.

 

But Harden-IT says it was designed for Advanced users not for Novice so I choose Secure-IT. Do you mean even beginners can then trust the recommended settings on Harden-IT w/out any problems? Do you recommend more on Harden-IT than Secure-IT? Tnx

 

Safexp screwed up all my services by turning off more than I bargined for. Godd thing I have regrun and blocked the changes. Still somethings got messed up and I just did a system restore to fix the rest of unwanted changes.

dja2k

 

harden-it is for changing network security settigns and secure-it is for changing IE security settings.

 

So does secure-it only benefit when you use Internet Explorer and not an alternative browser? Does secure-it interfier with browsing the web when it disables all that active-x stuff, maybe making some safe webistes not load correctly? Also does harden-it interfier in any way from lets say using shareaza or bitorrent clients?

 

secure-it changes settings in IE and the activex settings are maybe IE settings too. i think secure-it should also work for any IE-based browser (avant, maxthon, aol etc.) but browsers like netscape, firefox, and opera dont support activex anyways so im not worried. i have not noticed any problems with p2p and harden-it but every system is different. u can always undo the changes if u dont like a setting or it breaks something.

 

Does Secure-It only change MSIE settings ?
Why do you need Secure-It, when you can change MSIE settings manually ?
Sounds like a superfluous software to me, unless it does something more than that.

 

Secure-It does more than that I think. At least here it was making things very annoying for me. Every time explorer wanted to do something, I'd get a popup. I've used Harden-It with no problems at all, but I would hesitate to use Secure-It again. It changes to many things and makes using my system too annoying. Could be that I just didn't understand it enough though..

 

its easier to use a program then have to look in IE option or the registry various other programs also have tweaking programs too.

i hardly use IE so Ive never rele experience any problems from using it. by teh same logic, I should be able to do without Secure-It as Firefox is my browser of choice.

 

I only used Harden-It once, when I wasn't running any firewall for a month or two. Needed it to harden the TCP/IP stack. Just closed all my ports and ran naked for about 2 months. Was interesting..

 

Do you benefit at least something using harden-it with firewalls like LnS? And what do you guys mean, install with defaults and you should be okay - There are no defualts unless you mean the recommended settings, because I would assume the default setting it states is what windows has set right?

dja2k

 

I think the benefit of using Harden-It would be in the event that something went wrong with LnS for example, and it was down for some reason. Then Harden-It would offer you some basic protections. Maybe even some that the firewall alone couldn't handle or offer you when it was running also.

The "default" settings I am sure are those which you see in the program install as "recommended"..

 

harden-it automatically selects the "recommended" settings but theyre not the windows "default" settings, tho it does mention which is the windows settings.

 

So then should I install it iwth the recommended settings or with the defualt?

dja2k

 

just continually click next and you should be fine (will select recommended). also u dont need the program if u just select windows defaults neways if problems occur u can uninstall it and it will let u undo the changes/revert to default.

 

Thanks for all the replies, harden-it is installed with the recommended options and is working fine. I don't know if this program is whats causing a problem that I didn't have before , but for some reason, word documents now say an error that the file can't be registered and that no links to other documents are possible. Also Frontpage doesn't open anymore, it shuts off automatically after it starts. I can't open any .html in IE either Any ideas what could have cause this?

dja2k