anything like tiny?

Howdy, I'm trying to find a firewall that I like to run on this XP x64 machine.

I'm fairly attached to tiny firewall pro 2005 but I can't use it on 64bit windows.

what I've tried so far;

Outpost 2008 - not real keen on it. was misbehaving and caused problems with my browsers not being able to connect. I will not use outpost again.

Comodo - was good but the defense+ started to drive me mental. I would say to treat an app as a trusted app and then it would pop up more questions for the same app! wtf?
maybe use this with defense+ disabled.

Jetico - running at the moment. it's okay but from what I can see it's just a firewall.

I'm going to try Ghost Wall shortly. possibly in combination with AppDefend.

what I really want is something similar to tiny firewall in that whenever an unknown exe was launched it would put up a window for you to choose what to do. then if I knew what the program was I could select 'trust it' and then it could run and I would not be alerted again about that prog unless it was changed.
also the sandbox feature was pretty handy but I don't think that's going to happen on x64.

so is there anything else besides tiny firewall that functions like that? (is that what appdefend does?)

also what does HIPS stand for? google's no help.

I'm going a little bit spare here..

 

HIPS = Host Intrusion Prevention System

I was very attached to the prompts of Tiny also and have been trying to get some HIPS developers to provide a similar prompt. So far none have duplicated it's ease.

 

Would certainly disable Defense+. Had the same issue but with it turned off Comodo behaves itself...but then you have no HIPS.

Have you tried Webroot Desktop Firewall v5.5? I have not personally but have heard good things about it and it is free. Worth a try IMHO.

 

If I remember right, there are a few firewalls that offer that executable control and will ask you for permission etc. I think McAfee Desktop Firewall 8.5 had that, but I have no idea if it's still around or available. Also Kerio 4.xx will let you set things up so that you get an alert popup when any new program executes, which you can then allow or deny and have it remember and so on. Kerio 4 is usually offered at a big discount also, last I remember it was selling for $10-15 US.

There really is nothing like the old Tiny Firewall. It was pretty much one of a kind. Nowadays, people seem to use a combo of basic firewall + HIPS to achieve the same thing.

 

Yeah, but the prompts from Tiny's HIPS

 

I've been unable to find any host intrusion prevention software or sandbox or a firewall with these features that will actually work on 64 bit windows. I've been at it for several weeks now and I've come up with nothing. Sure, I found some pretty cool programs - but I can't use them.

with the kernel patch protection in x64 it prevents a whole class of security programs from being able to work; HIPS, sandbox, etc.

while comodo does have defense+ I wouldn't call it a true IPS because it can't prevent things from running in the first place. it only tries to mop up afterwards - and it doesn't know what trust it means.

so the result of all this frustration (the kernel patch protection and not being able to use decent security software) is that I've completely gone off 64 bit windows. I really don't like having my options limited, and I'll be going back to using XP 32 bit very shortly.

unfortunately it's the only solution I could come up with. but at least I'll be able to use the software that I want.

I think microsoft's shot themselves in the foot there.

 

as far as the 64 bit firewalls are concerned;

well, jetico is a bit buggy and complicated.

after adding a couple of rules I'm using ghostwall successfully, but appdefend won't work for me.
[ edit: no ICS ]

don't forget the xp windows firewall does a fine job but just doesn't stop any outbound connections. they've changed that for vista though.

however the winner is COMODO with defense+ disabled. it just works.

 

"Outpost"....it works on x64 version!

As for Tiny FW, thou discontinued, here are a couple of old last versions downloadable~ http://www.oldversion.com/program.php?n=tpfirewall

 

An additional note about Tiny FW -

Tiny's last free version was 2.1.5 & thereafter discontinued. But in reality v2.1.5 has a descendant also known as Kerio v2.1.5 (also free). Kerio's originators is the same team that developed Tiny-FW from the very start, using the technique termed by them as "winRoute".

If comparison were done between TinyFW v2.1.5 and Kerio v215, its interface & features are exactly identical. Since Kerio's progeny was from Tiny, the latter's noted ease of use & reliability has been carried forward to Kerio's new product releases.

The current commercialized Kerio is known as "Kerio WinRoute FW", which supports win2K up to Vista.

 

I was not happy with outpost, as I'm sure I mentioned earlier, and I tried kerio firewall years ago so I gave it a miss this time round.

I just had a look at their site and kerio winroute firewall seems to have a lot of unneccessary crap in it. - and a p2p eliminator? jeez, we don't want that
It may be just what a business wants though, and there's a 64 bit version.

those versions of tiny firewall on oldversion.com have nothing much in common with the one I've been talking about.

if anybody wants to have a look at tiny firewall you can get it here
http://members.westnet.com.au/eksere/TinyFirewallPRO-6.5.126.exe
32 bit only I'm afraid
6.5.126 was the last version they released.

I did manage to track down the 64bit version of tfp for download on some korean website. there are major problems with it though. the track and reverse mode does not function and the program is not compatible with 2003/XP x64 service pack 2. windows will not boot after installing SP2 if you have tfp64 installed.

however I will be using 32 bit windows and tiny firewall again in the very near future.

for now though, comodo is doing a good job. I am somewhat familiar with its application-based approach, thanks to tfp.