Is this Sygate Personal Firewall Pro 5.6 Final?

Ok, i have got Sygate Personal Firewall Pro 5.6.3311 but i would like to know if it is the final release.
nothing in the picture says it is beta

you can get it from this link:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=AIGGVC73

What's New for the Firewall?
This release of the Personal Firewall has a variety of new and enhanced features. Among them:

Provides Deep Packet Inspection—The Personal Firewall provides further enhanced intrusion detection and prevention capabilities, including alerts when another user attempts to compromise your system. The end result is a system that analyzes network packets and compares them with known attacks and known behavioral patterns of attack, and then intelligently blocks the malicious attacks.

Denial of Service (DoS) Protection—This enables the Personal Firewall to monitor and block incoming traffic with known Denial of Service (DoS) attack patterns. DoS attacks are characterized by an explicit attempt by an intruder to prevent legitimate users of a service from using that service by flooding a service with illegitimate traffic. This feature can be enabled or disabled.

Trojan Detection and Protection—Trojan protection is enhanced to identify, block, and terminate the process of more types of Trojan attacks.

Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) Protection—The Personal Firewall has a new option that protects computers from UPnP exploits. This feature can be enabled or disabled.

Log Dampener Feature—The Personal Firewall adds new logging flexibility and performance enhancement features, including the option to selectively enable or disable the security logs, system logs, traffic logs, and full packet logs.

Smart WINS—This feature allows Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS) requests only if they were requested. If the traffic was not requested, the WINS reply is blocked. The user can enable or disable this feature.

Active Response Protection—Active response is a feature that automatically blocks all communication from a source host once an attack has been detected. For example, if the Personal Firewall detects a DoS attack originating from a certain IP address, the Personal Firewall will automatically block any and all traffic from that IP for the duration specified in the seconds field. The user can now stop a current active response session.

Anti-Application Hijacking Protection—The Personal Firewall now protects against even more attacks, including such exploits such as "TooLeaky" and others.

Enhanced performance—The Personal Firewall is now faster and takes fewer system resources.

Improved Logging Capabilities—The Personal Firewall adds new logging flexibility, including the option to disable all logs.

Support for Windows Server 2003—The Personal Firewall is now supported on Windows Server 2003 for Small to Medium Businesses. For server deployments greater than 500 seats and that need centralized management, Sygate Secure Enterprise is required.

Improved Microsoft System Installer Support—The Personal Firewall is now packaged by default as a Microsoft System Installer (MSI) package to simplify deployment with Microsoft SMS and other software distribution tools.


any idea?

 

If I remember right, the beta did not identify itself as a "beta" anywhere. This is most likely just another time limited beta, so beware there. There is certainly no mention of any final release anywhere on the Sygate site or in their forums. Most likely your Pro key, if you have one, will not work with it either. I suspect you just have perhaps the last beta version, which does expire after a certain time period..

 

Well, I have to take back my words above.. I got curious, and installed this one and it did ask for my serial and license info/key, so I put it in, and it accepted and verified it ok, and on reboot, it remembered ok, so I have to say this does look like some kind of final release rather than a beta. I believe all the beta's didn't ask for a serial at all, just had a 30 or 60 day life.

It seems to use less resources than 5.5 Pro, about 15mb here and less cpu, down to just 1% rather than 2-3% as before.

When I run the update dialog, it says no new updates are available, and that this one 5.6.3311, is the current release. So I'd suggest anyone running 5.5 try doing a manual update and see if you get this version.

Everything else pretty much looks the same as before, all the same options. I doubt if the old proxy issue is fixed. But will have to check on that later.

It did recognize and handle my newer wireless drivers ok this time, whereas 5.5 seemed to have trouble with them. So that is a plus also.

So, my question would be why is it being offered in this way on this site, and not as an official release on the Sygate site or elsewhere? Perhaps someone jumped the gun and put it on this site early and the real thing will come out later? No idea..

Anyhow, it looks legit from all appearances (for anyone wanting to try it)...

 

Thanks Kerodo for your input. I guess we have got the final release even before Sygate fourm know about it . Mine too had no problem in accepting the serial and works fine, RAM use is about 7MB.

Do you think that Symantec Acquisition of Sygate has something to do with this release?

 

I have no idea, but somehow we seem to have a final release version of 5.6 before anyone else. I checked the forum and there is no mention of it there. All I see are some people mentioning that they stopped public beta's a while back, and also that there was at least one additional private beta since then, so I can only assume this is the final version. How it got on that site I have no idea. I searched but don't see it anywhere else..

And yes, after many hours of running, ram usage is down to 8mb. I must say it's quite light. Absolutely no memory leaks either. Very tight here..

 

It has the same md5 checksum ( 7cc2e265b85396510e20778f7697bca3)
as the debug beta here, just the name has been changed:

http://forum.softpedia.com/index.php?showtopic=74923

More info here:

http://forums.sygate.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=14100&highlight=3311

 

Interesting.. however, none of the beta's asked you for a license key, so this is at least different in that respect, and appears to be a formal release. Do you mean the MD5 checksum is the same for the main Smc.Exe program? If that's the case, then that's entirely possible. But someone seems to have made a release package out of it either way.

Either that, or the last private beta they did was packaged to ask for a license key.. none of the public ones were though.. I have used them before and they never asked for a license.

 

Just checked for the programs themselves ("pspfb3311_Debug.exe" from my link above + the file "Sygate Personal Firewall Pro 5.6.3311.exe" extracted from the
megaupload download that alien x posted.)

 

Ok, thanks.. Well, all I can think of is they packaged up the last beta as if it were almost ready to go, with the dialog for serial key and so on. As far as I can tell, it works great and looks and acts like a regular release. Maybe that's the last one we'll ever see too. Could be they were getting ready to release it when all the Symantec stuff hit the fan and delayed it forever.

Anyway, as long as it works, I'll use it. Thanks for the information too..

 

With that nasty bug some people are experiencing on XP-SP2 systems (including myself), I would consider 5.6 a beta.

 

Well, based on your comment and the other links Noway posted above, I would say it's a "use at your own risk" type thing. We should probably all consider it a beta build until one is "officially" released, if indeed one ever is...

 

What is the nasty bug, Brian?
My Sygate PFP hasn't updated since I got it (manual download didn't work, either) and they haven't replied to my support request.

I tend to suspect an out-of-date firewall might be a liability. Can you advise?
Thanks!

 

Sygate has discontinued its consumer firewalls as of Nov 30,2005. I guess symantic has other plans.

its a shame Sygate firewall pro was a good product. just thought I would let you guys know.

 

It will crash the OS (XP SP2) and the firewall, forcing you to hit the reset button.
Not everyone is having this issue, but alot of people are.

5.5 works flawless though

 

5.6 3311 is a build based off the SSA client.

... Edit: Content removed pending Admin review.
CrazyM ...

reviewed and not allowed - Paul Wilders

Looks the forum is dead.
Will post more update later.

 

Thanks for that information...

 

Looking4mypassword, how do you accomplish what you said? Sorry that I don't understand. I love the Sygate firewall and would like to use it until I can't.

 

foundmypasswd.
Why was this edited? PM plz
This is public information from the Sygate forums that I posted under the Sygate KB.
Lets clear up some info about 5.6 3311. The link for the debug build was made public then pulled in the same day. For those that insist on running 3311, they should be aware of the issues. It is urged that you run the current release or beta 2818. 3311 was only to be given to those that were having problems with 2710 or 2818. IMO 2818 probably would have been released but the Symantec deal most likely put a nail on the coffin.
3311 has a bug of not creating the registry entry needed to identify build numbers for library updates. Without it, it will not update those.
It has a bug of no longer responding to GUI if you select Hide Icon. You will be forced to re-install or shutdown and restore backup dat file.
Some of the same long time issues are still present. It is a debug build so no direct support is/was available.
The ‘will not expire’ means the debug build is not time bombed, neither is the beta. No builds display Beta in the About. The user’s current registration will continue to run just as 5.5 2710 or 5.6 2818 does. There is no Personal free edition of 5.6 3311.
Sygate forums has officially been pulled by Symantec. There is an attempt to continue the forum support as Veritas did but the outlook is not good. IMO It is very doubtful the forum support will ever return. (edit-may eat my words here.) At the moment the forum is back online.
jack

Red_Jack
Sygate Forums Moderator

 

I will continue to run beta b3311 because it is the only version that doesn't crash with my Intel Pro/100 VE network card. Official builds up to b2637, and the b2818 beta, caused random BSODs (ndis.sys) while shutting down or going to standby. The last official version, b2710, won't even let my system go into standby, it gives the infamous "network card busy" error instead. The b3311 beta works flawlessly for me though, I haven't had one crash or network card error yet. Unless there is a serious vulnerability with it or another problem they haven't told us about (I'm also curious what was edited out of the post above) I will continue to run it. Thanks for advising about the icon bug, I probably wouldn't have ever encountered it, but good to know.

b3311 beta has been on their public ftp for several months now, nothing was ever pulled, they just edited direct links on their forums that would have confused customers.

 

I don't see it on their public ftp site...

 

It might have been edited for wrongly taking the Not Expire comment. I don't know why it was edited. It was a needed registry entry how to update the library files.
Here is the link on the Sygate forum about how to update the library files with build 5.6 3311.
http://forums.sygate.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14426
Correct - The direct linking to the debug build was pulled from the forum.
Build 3311 should run fine for most people.

 

red_jack -

Can you say what, if anything, is new/changed/improved from 5.5.2710 to 5.6.3311? On the surface they seem to be identical.

 

There are no change logs available. Well none posted anyway.
The main change is none of the 5.5 builds are detected by the XP SP2 security center. All 5.6 builds are detected. 5.6 2808 had issues with the WMI and crashed some XP machines on startup or exit. Win9X machines had a smc.exe not responding message. These were both fixed on of the later builds of 5.6. Most of us noticed 5.6 builds seem to be optimized better, less CPU intensive. On startup there appears to be a delay to the GUI startup if the GUI session has not connected to the service yet.

This was posted on 5.6 2808; been reported the prevent XP firewall startup isn't working fully on 5.6 3311.
New Fixes for build 2808:
•SPF no longer opens listening ports on 127.0.0.1 and 0.0.0.0
•The menu button now pops up the context menu for the currently selected item.
•SPF no longer prompts for its own drivers, such as wgxn.
•SPF now prevents Windows XP firewall from starting up.
•SPF no longer shows the “Cocreate Instance” error message.
•Regular SPF no longer displays IDS signature serial number on the ‘About’ screen.
•SPF is now recognized by Windows XP SP2 Security Center

 

Thanks very much for the info..

 

Hello red_jack I thought I post something here on this forum to let you know that I’m here. Been registered on this site for over year and never got round to using it.