Untitled thread

[Ace 0]

Hey,

 

I've been using the SP2 Firewall for about 3 months now. But after going online with Google and looking up some reviews on it and reading some of the posts here, I'm not sure it's a good idea to use it anymore. So far, everyone has been saying to use ZoneAlarm and I guess I had a pretty good experience with it because I've beening using ZoneAlarm during the period I had SP1.

 

Some annoying things that happened though were that the fact that it crashed a few times, ZA, on me. It was always vsmon.exe that crashed and TrueVector seemed to crash and ZA would just have an "X" on its icon. I'm wondering if they even fixed these bugs. Have they had good reviews on protection and stability?

 

Also, I went to the website of ZA and I clicked on "Compare products" and the free version has a lot of things unchecked. But will it do a good of a job as any of the other ones? Finally, when I install ZA, should I have the internet disconnected then turn it back on when ZA is fully installed? And for reinsurace, will the SP2 Firewall shut down automatically?

 

Thanks

[DosFreak 2]

Well, using SP2 Firewall is better than no firewall at all.

 

Some thoughts:

 

Microsoft has never focused on boundary protection before. They do have their ISA Server product but it's basically a joke and it's intended for small business use...not home usee. Basically the point I'm getting to here is that Microsoft is not a firewall company.

 

Third party firewalls have been out for YEARS now. Microsoft has had IP filtering in it's products for years but no real firewall capability as such.

 

Which ver of ZoneAlarm were you using? Latest version is v5.1 but it seems to slow the internet down. Haven't had ZoneAlarm crash on me in awhile tho. Personally I use BlackIce, doesn't slow down my connection at all and it isn't as bloated. It also isn't free.

 

The free version of ZoneAlarm is still far more feature rich than basic XP firewall. It's been awhile since I used it but I think Outpost Firewall is pretty good. You may want to try that.

 

 

Shouldn't matter to ZA if you have internet up or not when you installed it. I don't even think you have to reboot either but I may be wrong. As for XP firewall turning off itself I don't know. Just disable the service.

[ryoko 0]

ZA will turn off the XP firewall by itself when installed, and if you uninstall ZA, the XP version of the firewall will automatically be re-enabled. Because of this I would not recommend disabling the XP firewall. Just let Zonealarm do its thing.

 

-Ry