firewall (again)

[bad boy]

sorry not to do a search but it isnt working for me anyway zonealarm has been giving me a few problems lately, so can anyone reccommend a good easy to use free firewall? i tend to stay away from the hardcore porn sites so it doesent have to be that protective but im hopless on computers(or more precisely microsoft ) so anything thats simple to use would be good, thanks in advance

[trooper1212]

Kerio personal firewall.

[plotloss]

www.zonelabs.com I think.

[wiggy001]

What was the problem with Zonealarm? I use it and don't have any issues, although I recall they had an iffy update a couple of months back that a friend suggested I avoid.

Is it worth getting the latest updates to see if they solve your issues?

[FourWheelDrift]

trooper1212 said:

Kerio personal firewall.

Since I can guess what the problems are, after installing Kerio (used to be called Tiny Personal Firewall)

some bloke who uses it on GPL said:

After installing go to administration and put it in "ask me first", go to Vroc and join a race: Everytime your PC tries to make a connection a window appears warning you you shall allow it and check the litle box that says "create apropriate rule", after two or three times it is fixed. You must do the same for your e-mails, Internet conection, IRQ, and so on (even for online antivirus update) After having the necessary rules created you can go again to administration and change to "denny unknown". Remember that when you intend to play a new game online (ex. Netkar ) you must repeat the same process. Also remember when you have connection problems that maybe you must reopen Kerio's permission.

Think this should handle hosting, loads of people use it.

If not look for a hardware firewall with a router/ADSL modem all in one.
I use this one no problems at all with it.

[bad boy]

not sure whats wrong with zonealarm, was fine but decided to stop allowing me acces to the internet yesterday even after i had reinstalled it. i somehow have ended up with bull guard which seems to work ok, but it only has a 30 day trial, so will switch to kerio once its up. thanks for the replies

[trooper1212]

I use a hardware firewall and kerio on my PC. I used to have ZoneAlarm but the problem with it is exactly as bad boy is experiencing. For a good number of people, every few months it seems to lock down your pc and not allow any connections now matter what settings you change. A full re-install is the solution, but after a couple of times I got pissed off enough to use something else.

[jodypress]

i have used zonealarm for a few years now and has been great. upgraded to 5 a couple of months ago and complete nightmare. followed their way of uninstalling (i.e regedit etc and lots of rebooting) and then reinstalled 4.5 but still issues, so i am now using sygate personal firewall which is excelelent, tried to install kerio but it didn't let me because i have mcafee anti virus.

[Tafia]

trooper1212 said:

I use a hardware firewall and kerio on my PC. I used to have ZoneAlarm but the problem with it is exactly as bad boy is experiencing. For a good number of people, every few months it seems to lock down your pc and not allow any connections now matter what settings you change. A full re-install is the solution, but after a couple of times I got pissed off enough to use something else.

I have had this same firewall problem with Norton Internet Security. It happened after a Norton download a few weeks ago and was a pest until a recent Norton update appeared to fix the problem.

I knew when the problem was going to occur as the Alerts Tracker Title Bar in the bottom r/h corner of the screen, with a small half-globe icon took a long tiem to appear or failed to appear at all. The mouse also slowed down and only moved in jerks. When the icon appeared, it instantly went back to normal.

I thought it was fixed but it has just recurred this very evening. I switched on the PC and the alerts bar icon failed to appear. I could not then access the internet.

I switched off the PC, restarted it and now it is OK again. Until the next time, I guess.

Norton won't talk to me as they no longer support the 2002 version, even though they accepted my cash for the regular updates.

I have the upgrade disc to move to Norton 2004 here but my local computer shop chap said Norton Internet Security 2004 had been causing a lot of crashes so am in a bit of a bind as to what to do.

I know others have had this problem with Norton. Anyone know the answer?

Cheers