PC Tools Firewall 7 Beta

The new Beta for PC Tools Firewall is in place..

http://www.pctools.com/forum/showthread.php?t=67028

Martin.-

 

So, who is going to kick this one's tyres?

I'm on version 6.0.0.88 and hope the new version is a winner.

 

I'm taking it for a ride right now.
Having some troubles with the Network Detection system.
I'm on a corporate Lan and It detects the LAN session and the Internet Proxy as the same... which is not cool.
The latest stable version could see them both as different connections and treat them accordingly.
Waiting for a reply from the forums atm.

 

I totally gave up on PC Tools Firewall.

I'm not going to bother trying it.

All of PC Tools software is bugware.

I'll stick with what works, ZA.

One thing I will give PC Tools is

they have much better support than ZA.

 

hmm, never had a problem with their firewall, Threatfire is one that has been buggy for me tho.

 

Takes a little setting up but then it does the job! No complaints but I want to hear how the new one works before upgrading. Of course, it's beta so there maybe quite a wait for the stable...?

 

Just installed it.
Testing it right now.

First impression:
No problems with installing
Performance: fast, no slowdowns.
Crashed first time opening OpenOffice.org Writer.
After restart of the firewall, no problem opening the same program.

 

Had to uninstall due to a BSOD with Avast 5 (which is now replacing MSE for me -atm-).
Avast setup froze installing the drivers -I'm asuming a pop up from PC Tools Firewall didn't show and that caused the problem.

Uninstalled the firewall and everything was fine. Had seen this kind of slowdowns installing apps with the beta but never a crash.

 

I hope the PCTools folks got the PCT FW's HIPS/leak-pluggers working better. The PCT FW used to rate high on Matousec's comical tests, & then it nose-dived to obscurity.

Is anyone checking out PCT FW's hippiness? (I hope)

 

uninstalled it, didn't remember some answers.
went back to WF.

 

I just uninstalled PCT - probably not this latest beta though - because it began to freeze every time I tried to access the Applications tab. Then when I tried to register for their forum it told me my address had been banned. I have zero idea what that's all about, but I could find no way to contact them to ask. I tweeted to them, but got no reply there.

I liked the FW while I had it (XP sp3 on a desktop and laptop). It was light and did what I needed to be done, and seemed to get along well with Avast. But I reached the end of the road with it with the above occurrences.

 

Maybe you might want to give Private FW a try.

 

I use version 6 of this program, I think great, this BETA version has bugs? Has release date?

 

bellgamin, that's exactly where I've ended up. It seems to be very light and efficient, and I trust, effective. I only have two wishes: that the icon would show activity, and that it would show real time activity on the port tab. Both those can be had - my network connection icon shows activity (but not its direction), and the TCP/IP tab on Task Manager shows transmission speeds. But neither is ideal.

Still, it's about as close to my old Kerio 2.15 as I've seen, plus it has HIPS.

 

I have always liked pctools firewall for its ease of use,simplicity...i have used it wirh avast and microsoft security essentials.If they improve boot time,HIPs and looks i will go for it any day ..hope version 7 is all that and more....

 

LnS has the same behavior with it's static tray icon. Have you seen Softperfect Networx? I like using the deskband (sits next to tray) to monitor traffic. It's free and unobtrusive.

 

Thanks. That's a nice app, but unless I missed it, it doesn't show live traffic by process/port, which is what I'm looking for. I want to be able to see which program is transferring data at those times when I suspect something is amiss. I guess I didn't realize how good I had it with the old Kerio. I also checked out NirSofts CurrPorts, which is also nice but doesn't have this function. I can live without it, but it would be nice to have, especially resident in the FW itself.

 

TCP View shows Packets and Bytes.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897437.aspx

E.g. Outpost (Network Activity) and OA (Firewall Status) show the traffic per connection.

Cheers

 

It doesn't. I missed the process/port part and thought you were just looking for something to replace the dynamic tray icon of Kerio.

 

Ok. So I decided to give this another try.
Reinstalled using the patches from this post: http://www.pctools.com/forum/showthread.php?t=67086

At the moment the firewall is behaving as it should.
Will post more after some testing.
It even detected Avast Service acting as a local proxy (web and network shields I asume) which is more than I can say for Comodo IS.


Martin.-

 

Subset - thanks, TCPView looks very good. Over in the nearby Private Firewall thread "Expresso" informed me that Prio, which I was already using, adds all (I think) this information to the TCP/IP tab it adds to Task Manager. So I'm all set up with this functionality at this point.

 

Same here, at least the current stable release. I'm not going to use a beta of a system level component on my main system. I've had zero problems with it, and it's fast and lean. (I dont want or need the extra "security" nonsense that most firewalls throw in.. if I want bloat I'll load up ZoneAlarm, or if I wanted to be nagged to death I'll get Comodo thank you.) Can't comment on Threatfire, don't use it, but the firewall has been rock solid for me. My only complaint would to lose the ghastly XP skin on the GUI.. I hate skinned apps, ones that emulate Luna even more so.

 

lol u have no idea how much i agree with u

 

IMO, Pctools Firewall is a good one. It has no many popups which make you annoyed.

 

What bloat? I find no bloat in ZA, Pro or Free.

No troubles, just great protection.