Outpost Firewall 3.0

Anyone using Outpost Firewall 3.0, with anti-spware stuff: if so, how is it? Sounds great, in theory, but I always prefer hearing an end-user's (general) opinion rather than just trusting PR from any given company. The app., its approach to fending off bad guys may even be as good as they claim - but, here again, I always am glad to hear from those using an app.

A while back, I got Sygate Pro f'wall AND THEN FOUND OUT that ("bloatware is king international") - Symantec - had bought Sygate and so, down the road after the latter co. ****s up what seems to be a decent f'wall... I may have to start shopping again for another f'wall.

Thanks, for any info/opinions,
SG1 (Pat)

 

The Anti-Spyware FAQ in the Outpost forum thread Outpost 3.0 - What to expect does provide some information here.

 

I've been loyal to Sygate for many years, I also own a lifetime Outpost license but found v2.7 slowed my machine down. I tried Kerio, Look'n'stop, Kaspersky Anti-Hacker, but since v3.0 of Outpost came out it's been running great and I'd highly recommend it!

Fedorov.

 

You think 2.7 slows you down?? 3.0 with the all of its modules enabled slows your network down very badly. I have a program that streams in price data in real time, and it was putting me off real time by 8 seconds during fast markets.

Although I think 3.0 is the most comprehensive software firewall to date, I am switching to a hardware firewall/ antivirus. That plus PG and SNS should be plenty of security w/o the network lag.

 

went back to outpost 2.5 - the best version.

 

Outpost itself should not be having this effect (and yes, I have done online gamblingtrading with it also). Check that you have followed the recommendations in Resolving High CPU Utilisation Issues with Outpost.

Also see Is there any outpost tweaks to improve surfing speed? if problems persist after following the FAQ.

 

You P2K ? If someone else would have told me that, i would not believe it.

no offence btw, just surprised ..

 

Thanks Paranoid for the info...I will check it out. For now I have switched back to LNS.

I am still looking into the Fortinet 60 hardware firewall..

p.s. Gambling assumes that the house has the edge. I have been trading since 87, so the only gamblers are the ones who take positions against me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I'll just chime in and say I did a clean install today. I did a good cleaning before using Spy-Bot mainly. The Spyware plugin found nothing. I run with about half of the plugins stopped. I am also behind a FW router. Still it is good to have a realtime Spyware program intergrated in my Firewall I guess. I know there are other good ones too. But I do not like to many security programs sniffing around at the same time in realtime. IMHO it can be over kill and do more harm then good.

OP 3 works just fine for me. Still a fine product IMHO.

EDIT: Wait a minute the Spyware data base is not updating...please reference other thread if interested for details.

 

Don't try to put P2k into a box........he will surprize everytime

 

I am using Outpost Firewall 3.0 and Webroot Spy Sweeper 4.5.3.560. Before that, I was using ZoneAlarm 6.0.0.667 and Spy Sweeper 4.0.3. and no error occurred.

Outpost Firewall 3.0 was installed clean on my clean Windows XP with SP2 and after the installation, the Spyware plug-in module in Outpost Firewall was disabled.

Spy Sweeper 4.5.3.560 was then installed and I got a BSOD with IRQ not less than equal error. It seems that Spy Sweeper 4.5.3.560 has a conflict with the Spyware plug-in module of Outpost Firewall.

Does anyone got the same?

 

No, i'm using the same combo, but with Outpost AS as real-time & SS 4.5 as on-demand, no issue's whatsoever. Did you stop the AS plugin and then remove it?

 

Hi Don,

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Before installing Spy Sweeper 4.5.3.560, I have already disabled the Spyware plug-in in Outpost Firewall 3.0.543.431. After the installation of Spy Sweeper, Spy Sweeper became the only real-time spyware scanner because the Spyware plug-in in Outpost Firewall was disabled. The IRQ_NOT_Less_Than_Equal BSOD occured when I was customizing the settings of Spy Sweeper. I was lucky that I have an image of my partition created with Acronis True Image 9 just before the installation of Spy Sweeper, so that I rolled back to the previous working XP state and try installing Spy Sweeper again. However, I still got the BSOD.

Spy Sweeper has been working with Kaspersky AntiVirus and ZoneAlarm before, so KAV should not be the cause of the BSOD.

I then rolled back to the previous again and install CounterSpy 1.5.77 and see if it would work with Outpost's spyware module. This time, I was able to work with CounterSpy and Outpost's Spyware module with both running in real time and no conflict was noted so far.

I just sent an e-mail to Webroot and see if they would help.

For testing purpose, I have been having Spy Sweeper 4.0.4.430, CounterSpy Beta 1.5 running together with ZoneAlarm Pro 6.0 before in Windows 2000 and no conflict was noted. I was therefore surprised that Spy Sweeper 4.5triggered a BSOD with Outpost.

Michael

 

Chubb, do you have the anti-spyware feature turned on in ZA? Just curious.

 

SG1 -
If you only knew how much anti-malware software we have running on this computer you would be simply amazed - especially to see just how fast this computer still runs! Outpost Firewall Pro is still the most configurable, most flexible and most secure firewall which also uses the least resources possible. We run many applications at one time and find no adverse slow-downs. BTW - for those who are wondering - we only have 512 MB of RAM currently. And yes we are using all the options in OP 3.0 Pro as well.

 

The anti-spyware feature of ZoneAlarm Pro was turned off prior to installing and launching Spy Sweeper.

Occassionally, I would manually turned on the anti-spyware feature of ZoneAlarm Pro just to update the signature and then turned it off after the update.

Spy Sweeper was my major anit-spyware program in Windows 2000.

Last night, in Windows XP, I turned on both CounterSpy 1.5.77 and the anti-spyware module of Outpost 3.0, and it seems that they are both working without causing any conflict so far.

Michael

 

I had a lot of problems with Spysweeper and Outpost in the past and quit using it my self.

I have also found Outpost does not get a long with Spyware Doctor or Pest patrol as well each will detect Outpost's driver as spyware and remove it. So be careful when using these in your security line up.

 

Hi Chubb

I am running Spysweeper 4.5.3.360 and Outpost 3.0 with Anti-Spyware plug-in enabled. There have been no problems at all!
By the way, also running KAV Personal Pro.
Hope you solve your problem.
Regards
Rui

 

This is the fault of Spyware Doctor and Pest Patrol since they report a false positive (see the Outpost forum Spyware Doctor detecting OP Registry code as Backdoor.Hackdoor trojan horse thread) so it should be corrected by a definitions update.

 

Thanks for your information~~

 

Oh really? Thanks for your information. I have sent a ticket to Webroot and am waiting for a solution. Did you experience a minute delay in loading the definitions every time you start Spy Sweeper?

I have the same configuration as you have in Windows XP but got the BSOD problem. In my Window 2000, I have ZoneAlarm Pro 6.0.0.667 and NOD32 2.5 and Spy Sweeper 4.5.0.360. Although Spy Sweeper can run in my Windows 2000, it make my PC very slow~~

 

There is a new build of SS called 4.5.5.604.

 

OH, thanks~~

 

Hi Chubb

Yes, I do experience a considerable delay, too. According to my experience, Spysweeper consumes a lot of resources.

Do you think it is possible that the BSOD problem you are having may be related to the amount of RAM you have?

On the other hand, what browser are you using? If not using IE, you could probably disable IE protection settings. That's what I did, as I am using Opera and Firefox

On the other hand,, I am also running SpywareBlaster and SpywareGuard and probably does not make much sense activating - in Spysweeeper - some IE shields that are already covered by SB and SG.

Another idea is taking a note of the order you are following when configurating Spysweeeper shields and see at what step of the configuration you get the BSOD. If you get it, then restart the PC and repeat the procedure exactly wth the same order. If you get the BSOD again, does it happen exactly at the same point? This might help understanding the cause of the problem, specially if you are going bo be helped by Webroot support. And, if you get a second BSOD, try setting the shields for a third time, but do not enable the shield that gave you the BSOD: jump over it and move to another shield. What happens?

Finally, have you already tried new build 604?

Hope this helps casting some light on the cause of the problem.

Regards

Rui

 

Hi Rui,

Thanks very much for your information.

Hm....I have 1GB RAM (Rambus), and I am lucky that I did not got errors in the RAM in the past.

I have been very careful in installing Spy Sweeper because the previous 4.0.3.X series has caused a lot of system freezes. Their technical support advised that it is due to the amount of IE bookmarks in the favorites folder. I have a lot of IE bookmarks and I have tested every shield in Spy Sweeper and found that the favorite shield is the cause of the hang and freeze. It seems that the favorite shield is incapable of handling so many bookmarks and this caused the hang. The development advised that they are aware of the problem and they are working on it.

Upon receiving the 4.5.3.560, I immediately unchecked the favorite shield after the installation is complete. On the two BSOD occassions, the BSOD occurred just when I have unchecked the favorite shield and is browsing through other shields. Your mentioning of RAM has reminded me that the memory shield maybe the cause of BSOD for this time, although I need to confirm with some more testing.

The IE security pop-up blocker and the Windows Firewall were both disabled prior to installing Spy Sweeper. This is the same configuration as when I were using 4.0.3.x before. I have also disabled the spyware plug-in module of Outpost Firewall 3.0.

What's new in 4.5.3.560 was the Active X shield and several more new shields. I am not sure if these new shields were the cause of the problem. Yes, you are quite right that some of those new shields may cause conflict with some security guards that already exists in some other software or Windows itself.

Will try 4.5.5 tonight and see if the problem persists.

Thanks Rui...