Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall, system havoc

[Waldek Cielak]

Hi,

Yesterday I got tempted to uninstall Zone Alarm firewall and try Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall 4.5.916 due to issues between ZA and Utorrent. I had a stable Win Xp Home SP2 system with all updates, AVG Free antivirus, Windows Defender and Spybot S&D. With no viruses ever reported, nor any indication of them. Right after installing Kerio firewall, I noticed that I could not open applications, being blocked by the firewall by default. So I changed the settings in firewall configuration, however after some period of struggle with this software ( slowing system down, not updating its list of programs allowed for internet access and throwing dozens of popups and generally rendering system unusable, not exaggerating ) I decided to uninstall it. Rebooting system and getting rid of Kerio firewall apparently solved the problem and system seemed to be stable again. Later on, I decided to install Zone Alarm again, and now a few minutes after every reboot, when I start any application, it takes about 5 minutes to launch. So I restored the system to various checkpoints before it got messed up. Unfortunately it did not solve the issue. I have no firewall now, except Windows firewall, the system is still unstable and in a few minutes after logging in, it takes ages to launch any application. After this period, everything looks ok, applications start quickly, so it looks like:

logged in: 2-3 minutes ok, after that for 5-7 minutes can't start applications, later all ok as for now

I wanna emphasize that the system was very stable before and I have no new additional software in autostart ( msconfig checked ). Perhaps Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall left something behind ?

Any ideas ? Cheers.

[Waldek Cielak]

So no readers ever had issues with Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall ? It is hard to believe that.

[Jeremy]

Try Comodo Firewall Pro. It's freeware. It ranks first on MatouSec's leak test comparison page.

[Mangix]

i had an issue. It prevented a lot of p2p action.

[lost_packet]

So no readers ever had issues with Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall ?

An install of Sunbelt "Kerio" (not at all the chirpy Kerio firewall I knew and loved from before it got sold out) bluescreened me on restart.

Fortunately, I had a recent backup to revert to, which is a must for me before any system-wide change such as removing and installing firewalls. I'm sorry that you seem not to have had such foresight.

[Waldek Cielak]

Thank you for all input / advice. I will try Comodo Firewall then.

[RJARRRPCGP]

So no readers ever had issues with Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall ? It is hard to believe that.

It can cause nLite to crash, with a file not found exception, even when you clicked on "Permit".

A possible solution is to disable the application launch control function.

Edited May 12, 2007 by RJARRRPCGP

[weEvil]

(not at all the chirpy Kerio firewall I knew and loved from before it got sold out)

What version was that?

How long ago?

[Waldek Cielak]

My system is back, up n runnin. What I did is:

-uninstalled "Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall 4.5.916"

-cleaned registry with help of "TweakNow RegCleaner Std"

-installed "Comodo Firewall Pro 2.4.18.184"

Over last 24 h, I had no system issues, and Utorrent is running with full speed, well except for s_h_i_t_t_y BT Broadband's traffic shaping practices. As for now, Comodo Firewall looks like a good choice. BIG THANKS go to its developers

[Jeremy]

For future registry cleaning, try JV16 PowerTools.

Glad Comodo works for you.

[lost_packet]

(brucevangeorge) What version was that?

Version 2.1.5 Personal. The best one they ever made, IMHO.

(Waldek Cielak) My system is back, up n runnin.

Glad to hear it. For future system integrity, may I suggest a backup?

[Waldek Cielak]

Backup sounds like not a bad idea

I could not resist JV16 PowerTools, it found almost 1000 additional registry errors.

But that's a little off topic.

Thanks all of you guys for help !