A simple personal firewall and more questions

[k0jaK]

First of all thanks a lot to the people making this such a great forum!

I'm on a quest of building some sort of basic XP setup cd which is stripped from all nonsense which only makes stuff slower but still is easy to use for most people.

Applications I include in setup therefor are only the basics like:

-ffdshow

-ac3filter

-winrar

-nero

-quicktime and realalternative

-Acdsee

-winamp

-msoffice

-symantec av

-truecrypt

-eraser

-keepass

What I'm still looking for is a very simple personal firewall with just a bit more options than the one from ms. Any suggestions anyone?

Also if someone knows an easy way for novice XP users to be able to restore a system drive image themselves, lemme know. (Currently I use driveimage2002 cause acronis has too many options and yes/no screens for computernoobs)

Thanks in advance

[Doc Symbiosis]

AS personal firewall I prefer using kerio, perhaps you can give it a shot.

For the restoring I think driveimage is good choice, allthough personally, I prefer using Norton ( or now Symantec ) Ghost( cause they did unbelievable DOS-bootdisks with network and USB support, but I tink it's rather alike driveimage. There also exists a nice program called drive snapshot, which has the advantage, that you can create a snapshot with a running system. I was very scectical, when I first used it, but have made very good experiences til now.

[WotC]

I'm using PowerQuest DriveImage 5.0 - i prefere the DOS version when restoring - and its quite fast!

For firewall, i recommend Agnitum Outpost- there is a 30day trial. I know, u wanted to have a simple one, but i can install this unattended (AutoIT - the only drawback) and add settings via a script - so everyone who uses my install DVD can use my optimzed firewall settings...

[SwedenXP]

Alloh k0jaK and welcome here!

The vote from the swedish jury on Best Firewall goes to ZoneAlarm Anti-virus with the built in FireWall

(ver. 6.1.737.000).

It works great and it does not take a lot of system resources

From a cold and icy Sweden...

/ SwedenXP B)

Edited February 3, 2006 by SwedenXP

[RJARRRPCGP]

Alloh k0jaK and welcome here!

The vote from the swedish jury on Best Firewall goes to ZoneAlarm Anti-virus with the built in FireWall

(ver. 6.1.737.000).

It works great and it does not take a lot of system resources

From a cold and icy Sweden...

/ SwedenXP B)

Zone Alarm itself isn't anti-virus software.

[thuun derboy]

Sygate!

(bought out by makers of Norton products)

Admin install repacked w/7z yields a 4mb. 7zss setup.

-best soft firewall-

for repack:

setup.exe /a

(now do search on '7zip silent')

btw~

Norton AV...bloated garbage.

try Avast

Edited February 6, 2006 by thuun derboy

[RogueSpear]

Every 3rd party firewall I have tried sucks in it's own way. It's really pathetic the garbage out there. Believe it or not the only firewall that seems to work problem free for me it XP's built-in firewall. And yes, I'm aware that it's unidirectional. Every other firewall out there needs to be disabled way to often for one reason or another.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Every 3rd party firewall I have tried sucks in it's own way. It's really pathetic the garbage out there. Believe it or not the only firewall that seems to work problem free for me it XP's built-in firewall. And yes, I'm aware that it's unidirectional. Every other firewall out there needs to be disabled way to often for one reason or another.

SoftPerfect Personal Firewall works fine. I never had a problem with it just blocking applications out of the blue. As long as a port being used by an application is in the allowed list.

[WotC]

Every other firewall out there needs to be disabled way to often for one reason or another.

Uhm, i suppose that is what i call a user error. maybe you could give some hint what one reason or another was/is :-)?

@thuun derboy: Sygate WAS good. However, the last update for the home edition was some 3 years ago or so (correct me if i'm wrong)... and even more for the professional version! and if you check out leak tests you will see whats the point.

If you want a free firewall try jeticos personal firewall. very good according to leak tests, free, silent install option, small. On the other hand, i completely agree with you in terms of AV - Norton sucks (the whole "suite"). For a free AV i use either avast! or avg (both comparable in terms of virus detection efficiency). If you want to go for a commercial one, use nod32. i've been using kaspersky for some time but the impact on harddisk access time (transfer rate, whatever) is APITA.

[RogueSpear]

Uhm, i suppose that is what i call a user error. maybe you could give some hint what one reason or another was/is :-)?

You can call it whatever you like, but it's not an error on my part. A shining example would be Symantec Desktop Firewall or Norton Internet Security. They both majorly mess up Gmail. It's a known issue and I've gone round and round with Symantec's tech support. In fact I'm probably responsible for at least half a dozen entries in their knowledge base. I finally said enough is enough and after 4 years cancelled out a gold contract for a couple hundred seats.

[WotC]

as i said, user error :-). (don't take it seriously or personally, ok?)

using norton IS a usererror :-). i used nis up to 2004? or the version before? but it screwed up my system (and every other system i know of). in terms of speed, system integration, stability, annoying bugs/interfaces, predefined settings,... tried a LOT of other firewalls since then... till i found outpost. or jetico (depends whether i - or the installed machine - need(s) freeware or shareware). i've been using outpost for almost 2 years and had no mayor problems (ok the install engine sucks because the silent switch doesn't make it completely silence - but hey, you can't have everything, can you?!)...

[RogueSpear]

Outpost is actually what I'm currently evaluating. It's tough though because I need to test so much crap before commiting to putting this on several hundred computers.

[WotC]

i can imagine that... however, the advantage is the export-/importable settings file. ever thought of giving the office version a try? i wanted to check this out, but never done it up to now. if you have any information about that, please let me know.

[RogueSpear]

I figure with all of these firewalls I'm testing that I'll start with just the client first and see if the core product is any good. And then if things go well, I'll take a look at the management suite.

[k0jaK]

Thanks for the advice people.

As for virusscanner I think I stick to symantec corporate edition because it don't give many problems and it just keeps on updating;)

Persoanally I dont use a virusscanner cause I want my system to be as responsive as possible. The best way to keep a system clean is to regularly restore an image of the systemdrive/partition anyway. I'm kinda chaotic and I like not to worry about making a mess of my system so I just restore my image every few days, it just takes a few minutes and it feels good to know for sure there's no trojans, virusses or keyloggers active.

That jetico firewall is nice btw!

Edited February 11, 2006 by k0jaK