Some firewall observations

PFW Cons-
I got Very Tired of having to Allow Everything... (Especially during installs that got corrupted..., and I was in Training Mode (I would still get pop-ups for Allow)).
Maybe I should have tried to Exit PFW instead?
Greg filters Everything, but this made applications way too slow.

Process Explorer constantly shows Big PFW memory spikes every couple of seconds, and everything was Allowed?

CPU fan would also intermittently low whine (somewhat annoying), and No whine with Win firewall (i5-2500/maxed memory, no space for a 3d party fan on my MBO), even at idle?-
I guessed Win was indexing/lots of svchost/PFW (memory mostly idling at 99%+-), especially after closing Windows Live Mail (POP3)?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I uninstalled PFW, and tried Online Armor Free (28mb download (bloatware)), and Allowed Everything)?

OA Pros-
Nice GUI interface, and Much easier to Allow New processes...
Programs/Installs/Uninstalls were Fast, with no FW halts during program installs.

OA Cons (also noted by others...)!-
My CPU fan would constantly whine Loudly, and drove me NUTS!
~~~~~~~~
I just don't know about 3d party FW's?-
I'm now back to Win firewall, and surf only in sandboxie....., and my CPU fan stopped humming.

 

Re: Private Firewall Updated (again)

The fan only spins up if the CPU gets hot. Was OA constantly using a high percentage of processor time? How did you figure out it was caused by OA?

 

Re: Private Firewall Updated (again)

exactly.......

 

Re: Private Firewall Updated (again)

if you're comfortable with win fw then that's great......along with sbie that's more than enough security

 

Re: Private Firewall Updated (again)

Is Windows XP Firewall also adequate?

 

Re: Private Firewall Updated (again)

nope....xp fw provides protection for inbound connection....and that too is very weak.......

 

I would not label the Microsoft WindowsXP Firewall "very weak"

I have had the Microsoft WindowsXP Firewall enabled for quite some time now, with logging enabled.
It is overwhelming the number of inbound connections that are blocked.

Safe Surfing is intentionally not practiced on that machine.

The only security on that Microsoft WindowsXP SP3 machine is the Microsoft WindowsXP Firewall, Microsoft Security
Essentials, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, all behind an Firewall Router.

The simplest and most reliable firewall rule is to Allow all outbound traffic and Block all inbound traffic.

Most third party security software impedes the performance of the Microsoft Windows Operating System.

It is an older machine but runs fast, smooth, and reliable, and is intentionally abused.

Disabling the Indexing Service and Advanced Text Services will do wonders for any version of Microsoft Windows.


HKEY1952

 

Re: Private Firewall Updated (again)

What is your basis for this statement?

I ran the XP ICS firewall, (which later became the Windows firewall in SP2), on an older machine that
was on a direct unfiltered connection to the Net from about 2003 - 2007. You could see the worm
probes and other dropped packets like unsolicited P2P, by reading the logs.
Nothing ever got through.

The Vista/W7 version is even more powerful.