Safest Firewall

[Bowser]

I wanted to get myself a firewall but have been afraid that it will mess up my net connection like zonealarm did about a year ago when I couldnt connect anymore and had to reformat. Then I tried MacAfee and it did the same thing to my laptop(thank lucifer system restore fixed it). I just want a good firewall that will uninstall itself completely when i want to get rid of it (one that I dont have to hunt down files and dll's left behind). Yesterday I tried Sygate but when I uninstalled it (just to see what would happen) my internet connection slowed down to a crawl(had to use system restore again). Please can somebody recommend a firewall that wont wreck my system when uninstalled but does a great job.
Thanks in advance and thanks for reading!!!!

[Winphuk]

If you are running windows XP then just use the built-in firewall.
Go into TCP/IP properties, and check the box.

[Bowser]

I am but I just wanted something more advanced. With the RIAA and their buddies going around spying not to mention hackers I feel the built in firewall is not enough.

[grab_grab_the_haddock]

My favorite firewall is kerio personal firewall. It uses very little system resources (less than 4 mb), allows you to monitor access for every single application on your PC, is highly configurable if you like to play around with rules and such like, and ive experienced less stability and compatibility issues with kerio than any other firewall ive tried. Its also free which is also a bonus. The only thing i dont like about it is that there is no way to terminate a specific connection. Apart from this i highly recommend it.

www.kerio.com

[twuckDrifer]

Yep. Kerio works great,and free too.

[Aaron73153]

Tiny Personal Firewall

[Malakai1911]

Agnitum Outpost Firewall (free or pro)

www.agnitum.com


They are also the makers of tauscan, an excellent trojan scanner.

[Ken17625]

I'm partial to Kerio. Free for individual/home use. loads fast, takes up little resources (not a bloated peice of crap).

[Winphuk]

Ever look into peer guardian?

http://xs.tech.nu/

[Rahwgwar]

As the others mentioned, I like Kerio as well too. From what I can gather, it does an excellent job.

http://grc.com/lt/leaktest.htm

While you're on that page, you should take a look at the personal firewall scoreboard as well. Read those couple pages and I highly recommend you download the leakage tester. It's small and freeware, yet it is an excellent benchmarking tool for any firewall. The Win XP firewall is basic in a sense that it has no application awareness.

I ran Sygate Personal Firewall PRO and it passed with flying colors. It blocked its initial communication and then blocked it after I renamed it to a trusted application. All this was done in stealth mode. This in it of itself makes me fully confidant of Sygate's capabilities. From personal experience, I have come to fully trust it. I am fully satisifeid with Sygate and I may one day return to Kerio. BUT, for the time being Sygate has gone above and beyond my expectations. With the importation of bad IP addresses of the MPAA, RIAA, IRC bots, and MediaForce I feel that I am pretty much protected as well as I can be. I also use spyware blocker and spyware guard.

If worst comes to worst, how often have you tried to delete your firewalls in safe mode?

For a fairly good overview on firewalls and A LOT of other security issues, you should head on over here: http://www.wilders.org/firewalls.htm

Aside from performance, it all really comes down to preference.

-Peace

[Bowser]

I currently have peer guardian running but I dont consider it a firewall but it does keep the music and movie industry from getting in my business:devil I haven't tried deleting/uninstalling firewalls in safe mode I didn't know it would make a difference.
Thanks for all the info guys!!!:fire
Thanks for the links Rahwgwar they are really helping me out.

[MusikBeatz23]

I was recommende once 2 use Sygate Prsonal Firewall PRO... i tried it and i have used it since...

Check It Out (http://sygate.com/default.htm)

[RACKnRAIL]

Buy a router...try an easy to config one. NetGear has an easy to configure and is relatively inexpensive. It comes with it's own software firewall. I also had problems with ZA and haven't looked back ever since putting in my router.

Just remember opinions are like assholes...everybody has one!

[Wings_of_Azrael]

I use KerioPF, it's a bare-bones, rules oriented firewall. I've never felt as safe with any other firewall, simply because none of the other free versions allow such a high level of control over rule sets. You might also want to keep an app like TCPView (http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/tcpview.shtml) handy to close connections.

BTW, None So Vile is a classic in my book.

[nasrules]

I use ZoneAlarm Pro and have had no problems since 3.x came out. Before that, if you uninstalled ZAPro, it caused problems.

[Bad Seed]

Kerio is a good one but I prefer Look'n'Stop firewall (http://www.looknstop.com/En/index2.htm), is a little more difficult to use the first time but has more advanced options. Also Kerio 3 (still beta) is great

[triniti]

Smooth Wall is free and open source and very secure. Except it is not a personal firewall, it's made for a server as a gateway.

[el_omega]

Sygate Firewall all the way.

Been using this for about a year, low on resources and very effective.

Go and get this one, you won't be dissapointed.

[Ea$y_E]

sygate personal firewall pro....havent looked back since using it

for all those here with sygate pro check out
http://koti.mbnet.fi/zerodata/
you can easily import the latest ip ranges to block via the advanced rules.

[Krell]

sygate personal firewall pro is the best balance I have found so far, and I have all of them on my hard drive, as far as I can tell.

I import the Peer Gaurdian block list in and use that as Advanced Rules.