Looking for firewall recommendation

I looking to complement my setup with a firewall to keep control on outgoing connections. Im looking for light, free, and without HIPS. What are your suggestions?

Thanks!

 

As for myself I have been using L'n'S for years without any problems. It's very light and no HIPS.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, but i´m looking for a free firewall.

 

How about the Windows 7 firewall with one of the front ends:

Windows Firewall Notifier
Windows Firewall Control

...and a few others.

 

I would suggest the new Comodo Firewall then. It's powerful, light and HIPS is disabled by default....fits your description quite well.

 

So far i tried:

Windows Firewall Notifier: seems that services monitoring must be disabled or else is impossible to create rules.

Zone Alarm Free: very easy to understand, but i had some problems with Winpatrol. It is possible to use it as a simple firewall, but there lots of extra features i don't want.

Comodo Firewall: (at this point i uninstalled Winpatrol , since i realized that a HIPS provides more prevention). Damn, Comodo is very different now. I didn't liked the new GUI (more difficult to control the firewall and defense+ rules, see the traffic, etc.), and i also felt that i was using i full security suite and not a firewall.

Now i just finished restoring a clean image and i´ll uninstall WinPatrol and give PrivateFirewall a try.

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

I don't follow...services monitoring? What is that?

 

Right after install Windows Firewall Notifier, i was unable to to answer the pop-ups i get some error saying that it was not possible to create rules. I've googled i bit and found that in the settings i should disable the monitoring of the services, or else i couldn't create rules...

 

Never heard of an issue like that with WFN.
I still don't follow what you mean by "disabling of monitoring of the services".
I don't have anything like that or even heard of any such monitor or service.

By the way I am running WFN in Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1 with all updates.

 

Here it is...
Windows 7 x 32 Premium

Do you (or anyone) know what this is?

 

Free equals Windows Firewall.

Paid equals LNS or Online Armor imho.

 

I always have to remove the check from "Services:N/D", or disable that option permanently in the settings, in order to be able to create a new rule.

Edit: Ok, i think i already understood how it works. I should choose according to what is connecting to the internet.

 

Comodo : Disable all HIPS and behavior blocker
PrivateFirewall Disable all HIPS

 

These are great suggestions

 

Thanks you guys for the suggestions

I ended up opting for Windows Firewall Notifier, its light and perform the simple task of controlling the outgoing connections, using own Windows Firewall.

 

AlexC, glad that you got it squared away!

Don't forget to backup your firewall profile once you have configured all the settings to your liking:
Go to the Windows firewall "Advanced settings" option and then choose "Export Policy".

 

The built in W7 firewall

 

Thank you, thats a nice tip.

 

it was very light ,but the new version is boatware i won't say light

the previous version was great !

 

As for it's ram usage, it takes very little.

Disk I/O isn't bad

As for how many processes it requires, I do wish it was less (but not bloated).

The interface is different and takes some getting use to, but overall nothing about that was too bloated either.

So, what exactly did you find bloated?

Just curious

 

the file size 127mb
and some features that i don't need , i don't remember extracly but if i'm not wrong can virtualize the os
and maybe because i liked the precedents version

 

The installation package file size is not an indicator as to RAM usage.

The only way to know for sure is to run the software in a typical manner and then go to the "task manager".

 

task manager is actually pretty inaccurate too.

they say it is best to look at disk i/o, overall ram use before and after program installation, and just how your program feels.

oh, and my recommendations would be either comodo or Windows Firewall w/ Advanced security (see Stems thread)

 

Dude, what on earth are you talking about...Task Manager displays all you mentioned and is the default program for checking running application stats!

 

What I am saying is that you can write a program so task manager says it uses 4mb ram when it is really using 50mb...in other words I am saying the same thing I said in my previous post......it is completely inaccurate for ram use and has been discussed many times. Read up on it if you don't believe me.

This is why AV comparatives refuses to show ram use from task manager in its comparisons.