I am looking for a firewall app for windows that meets the following requirements. Free No bloat e.g. hips, especially not hips. Its ok if hips can be fully disabled. Doesnt piggy back on windows firewall Dont want a security suite. Compatible with windows 8.1 I have been using comodo on my laptop for a few days but wow is it slow, a bit of research suggests defense+ is the cause but it can no longer be disabled on the latest version, disabling hips doesnt prevent the scanning from occurring it just whitelists everything. Some data. startup apps to appear in system tray from desktop launch - 2.1 secs as above with comodo - 14.6 seconds Opening notepad2-mod pretty much instant as above with comodo - over 2 seconds (for a 1,559kb app) The reason i dont want to use the built ni windows firewall now is I have learned about the hidden WSH lock down rules which cannot be bypassed, these rules prevent modern apps from doing direct dns lookups, dns client service has to be enabled which I want to keep disabled. There is also that I dont want memory overflow protection as I already have EMET + MBAE. Seems previously recommended firewall's are either now EOL or merged into security suites
article is out of date, I wasnt hoping for people to not point me to third party sites. online armour is gone no longer exists. their info on comodo firewall is wrong, defense+ cannot be disabled. Most of the rest include hips, so that leaves just zone alarm?
Why it's outdated? The article "Last update on 30th June, 2015". In firewall section there are so big changes in the last 6 months? I don't think so. ------ In article: "Online Armor Free is no longer supported by the vendor."
Note it says comodo you can disable defense+ or choose to not install it, thats not the case. But... Thanks I found private firewall and so far I like it. Laptop is much faster again, and it doesnt rely on the windows firewall. (I think the windows firewall for the most part is decent but on windows 8 those hidden rules been broken meant I needed something else). Hehe I did find a online armour download and managed to install it, but even for the free version it needs online activation which they killed off, so I have never managed to try that highly rated software. Also regarding comodo I have no doubt it is decent for protection levels but my laptop is a low spec and the performance hit was unreal, also since I have other security layers in place, I think HIPS has low impartance for me (although I will use HIPS if it has bearable cost). Private firewall seems to have a sort of light hIPS, it has some behaviour monitoring which I have left enabled for now given its not slow.
It really is gone. Online Armor required a lot of back end stuff on the vendors part, and I believe that is being killed off
@anon, Online Armor is dead - forget about it. It can't work decently without Emsisoft servers. You even cannot install it. @chrcol, you can disable Defense+ in CF. If you feel comfortable to use 30% of resident app then go Defense+ -> HIPS -> uncheck "Enable HIPS". The same you can do for AutoSandbox. I would recomend to use 3-d party FW with outbound control, you may like following 2 FWs : Windows 10 Firewall Control from sphinx-soft.com - you may use paid without any restricions - it will just sporadically nag you "register, amigo!", ZoneAlarm free - a bit messy, but has sort of a program control I like it as well.
Indeed, basically all third party firewalls died off, only ones left are Zone Alarm and Comodo (not very fond of this one though). Windows Firewall with a custom GUI is pretty usable too, Glasswire makes very nice one, but free version is way too limited.
I used that on all of my computers before I went To Windows 7. Since I am using Outpost Firewall which is going Bye Bye at the end of the year, I'd better look into it again. Any comments?
I suspect you meant Outpost, not Outlook. I used the latest Private firewall on Windows7-SP1 for four months last year before reverting to Outpost (lifetime licence!). Private worked very well. You can use Outpost forever, so long as Windows doesn't change and breaks it. Just use the firewall section. It doesn't need updates. On Windows10, windows 10 firewall control AKA Sphinx firewall works well for me with the native Win firewall disabled (but filtering platform running of course).
TinyWall is propably the best free firewall, that has a simple intuitive interface and yet is what I think solid in its protection of Windows firewall.
whats wrong with the windows firewall with advanced security and a UI like windows firewall control v4? https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772589(v=ws.10).aspx http://www.howtogeek.com/165203/why-you-dont-need-to-install-a-third-party-firewall-and-when-you-do/ always this 3rd-party crap with its issues... instead wfc4 you can try zonealarm, i also interacts with the rule settings from windows firewall. also free.
Windows Firewall Notifier (http://wfn.codeplex.com/) is another lightweight controller, but gives notifications while TinyWall doesn't. I used it for a long time, but I couldn't seem to get it to work right after I "upgraded" to Windows 10. I guess others are still having good luck with it. TinyWall seems to be working for me now.
Windows Firewall Notifier does not work properly for a lot of people; when I used it, it seemed very buggy and development seems sporadic. That was over a year ago... There was a recent update in June, but it is still Alpha version. Looking at user reviews I would say WFN is "User at Your Own Risk" still. At the rate the publisher has made fixes, it will take another 5 years to get the major problems fixed.
I thought version 1 was pretty solid and that most of the problems were with the version 2 alpha, until I went to Windows 10 and neither seemed to work (last I knew version 1 even still claimed to be in beta even after v2 alpha came out). I used to would have recommended WFN v1, but now I think you're right on with "Use at Your Own Risk", and now, like Jarmo P, recommend TinyWall.
I absolutely agree. TinyWall is much better in terms of reliability. WFN would be great if it worked - but I think there is little hope of that any time soon...
I cannot disagree with those that recommend TinyWall because I haven't used it.... But I use ZoneAlarm Free Firewall and have been extremely happy with it for over 4 years.
Hi All I have had to remove TinyWall from my Win 10 PC. Even though I like the way it operates, once you get to know how it works, TinyWall has been problematic on my PC for a long time. When you change say from normal to learning or go to the management tab quite often it baulks and says that TinyWall is not communicating with its service. Under these circumstances TinyWall can be a nightmare to remove. I have for the first time installed ZoneAlarm which appears to work OK - So far. Terry ps no reply from developer when I emailed him!!
Maybe that thing can be useful http://winaero.com/blog/stop-windows-10-spying-on-you-using-just-windows-firewall/
