Best free personal firewall?

Lis2K!

Just read your last post, and was not clear if you were going to let ZA get it clutches on your PC or not, as you did indicate that you were going to try out some of the firewalls, so I feel compelled to issue a warning to be very cautious....

BEWARE ! If for some reason you might have a temporary lapse in good judgment and "try out" ZA, and subsequently UNinstall it (word is that you do NOT want to even have 2 firewalls installed at the same time...), be very cautious to find the sincerely long and monumentally detailed procedure of how to uninstall it, or you will run into a nightmare (like having ZA lock you out of any internet access for starters - imagine that for a while, and that's just the proverbial tip of the iceberg of the process...). I think that you were going after a free firewall, so that would exclude NIS, but beware of the exact same problem there, altho it is not as involved as ZA's painfully long extraction process. Other firewalls like Kerio and Outpost shouldl uninstall easily and cleanly.

Hopefully, that should tell you something about ZA right there...

Good luck, we await your suspensefull conclusion :)

No worries, key...I realized, after reading a few more posts, that installing the older version of ZA would probably not be good, since it doesn't have updated protection. Not to mention the fact, that it did crash my machine and freeze me up when I tried it in the past.

Keywester,

Sorry to hear you had such a hard time uninstalling ZA.
I still use ver 2.6.88 because it works well for me (Win98SE not networked) and it has the 30+ ext checks in its MailSafe feature.
(this feature stopped every virus in OE so far, even before my anti-virus had to go to work)
I once tried the 3.X version, but I lost the extensions in MailSafe.
I went to the ZA site and made a copy on the complete removal procedure and then did it.
The whole task of doing the complete Uninstall (which sounded very formidable in your statement below) took only took a few minutes.
I am happy with the free 2.6.88 version and I use it after my router with very good results.

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Originally posted by keywester
Lis2K!

Just read your last post, and was not clear if you were going to let ZA get it clutches on your PC or not, as you did indicate that you were going to try out some of the firewalls, so I feel compelled to issue a warning to be very cautious....

BEWARE ! If for some reason you might have a temporary lapse in good judgment and "try out" ZA, and subsequently UNinstall it (word is that you do NOT want to even have 2 firewalls installed at the same time...), be very cautious to find the sincerely long and monumentally detailed procedure of how to uninstall it, or you will run into a nightmare (like having ZA lock you out of any internet access for starters - imagine that for a while, and that's just the proverbial tip of the iceberg of the process...). I think that you were going after a free firewall, so that would exclude NIS, but beware of the exact same problem there, altho it is not as involved as ZA's painfully long extraction process. Other firewalls like Kerio and Outpost shouldl uninstall easily and cleanly.

Hopefully, that should tell you something about ZA right there...

Good luck, we await your suspensefull conclusion :)

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Sygate the ONLY one for me:D

Buffalo:

The entire uninstall process took several hours, I would say at least 3 hours, maybe 4 or 5. The process might have been extended somewhat due the fact that I had never run into a situation where I could not just simply uninstall a component thru normal add/remove. And maybe I am remembering/including things like getting locked out of ANY internet access after the first attempt at uninstalling (try to imagine trying to FIND information on what to do in that situation if you do not readily have another means of internet access....) and dealing with the process from that perspective. It has been a long time and I do not recall every hoop that I had to jump through, but some of the procedures in the process involved new and treacherous tasks for me, like manually deleting NUMEROUS entries from the registry (and of course trying to figure out HOW to do that without corrupting anything else, to include backing up the registry first, etc., all without readily available online access...). And of course, if I recall correctly, the time taken included little things like unsuccessfully trying restore back to a pre-uninstall checkpoint (I did not have a mirror image backup, my external hard drive went byebye with migration to XP).

And, I suppose that if it only took "a few minutes" for you, that surely ZA has refined the process since I was exposed to it (it seemed to be an obtusely drawn process out at the time...). And, maybe you are a pro and not new to the tasks like trudging thru removing all the registry entries, and so on... And maybe you are fast, not worried because you have a good restore procedure in place. Even so, only a few minutes??? Come on now, are you a ZA rep? :D

"version 6.2.88" ? hope you dont make mistakes like that when you are editing the registry...

Hi Keywester,

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"version 6.2.88" ? hope you dont make mistakes like that when you are editing the registry...

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No, I am not an expert, but I always export any key I am planning to change or delete in the Registry so that when I mess up, I can restore that entry. :D
I also keep a copy of the complete Registry before I begin.
A few things that I found to be very useful when Uninstalling any program was to End Task on all programs except Explorer when doing it so that there was less chance of a file being 'in use' that needed to be uninstalled and couldn't be.
Finish up with a reboot after each program uninstall and empty out the Windows\temp file.
When having a problem after an Uninstall, I re-install the program and check on the Internet or its Help file for additional info.

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Come on now, are you a ZA rep?

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:D
Hell, if I was a ZA rep, would I be using the old free version? :rolleyes: :D
I back and recommend what I think is good, not just because of what others say.
PS: I use Win98SE and I do not have any 'restore' points.
However, I do use a simple free program called RegBack that lets me save 14 or so Registries and allows me to use any one of them.
PS#2:
Now that you are more familar with editing the Registry,etc, I'll bet it would only take you a few minutes to do it all over again. :o
Another great free program is AddRemove Pro which does a much more thorough uninstall than the plain Win98 AddRemove does.
:)

Buffalo:

quote: "I'll bet it would only take you a few minutes to do it all over again."

LOL, don't think I could pull of the ENTIRE process now in less than an hour, I go pretty slow with stuff like that -- but one thing is for sure, I will never find out, 'cause the reason I was UNinstalling ZA was because I got burned by them and as a matter of principle, along with other numerous negative factors that I am now very much aware of (already stated for the most part), I wouldn't touch a ZA related product with the proverbial ten foot pole...

over and out

Keywester,
You are just following the old proverb:
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
:D :D :D :cool:

buffalo - I have no idea what you are actually attempting to imply, but my guess is that it is just as well that I don't - I aint foolin nobody about nothin, but I got a feelin you are trying to buffalo somebody here...

Keywester,
No hidden meaning at all.
It just means that when you get 'suckered' the second time, it's your fault.
ZA is not for you. :D

I installed ZA after either Fuelman or Delthro told me I needed one. So far so good, but then, I have not taken the time to figure out how to make sure it is setup correctly. I have ver 3.7 and so far so good. Not sure sometimes when I get messages that IP addresses are trying to access my computer weather they are legit or not.

Brewster:

My condolences. Don't just take my word for this -- you might want to do a forum search (either here, and/or try boardreader.com) on the subject of ZA and excessive over-reporting of ordinary internet "noise" as warning "alerts".

Why does ZA aggrandize the harmless noise and "over-report" it as alerts? To make you feel like the 'wall is doing it's job and that you have a lot more to beware of than is actually necessary ("so you better upgrade to the "pro" ver$ion...").

When I had ZA running and I was initially monitoring the traffic, ZA was logging two to three THOUSAND "alerts" per day, usually less than an hundred of which appeared to be of a malicious (or only suspicious) nature. And, when I was still a little backwards about firewalls (before being informed of reality by some kindly and honest folks on this forum), I was actually deceived into thinking that ZA was doing a better job than other firewalls because of the high volume of alerts that it was reporting ("duh, gee whiz, those other firewalls miss 2 to 3,000 intrusion attempts per day").

Anyway, one vein of advice seems to be to get a firewall setup and optimized to prevent intrusions, then turn off all alerts and logging and forget about the (software) firewall (then get a router as a hardware firewall, etc.). Well, don't forget about it all together -- keep up with the latest on V.Dr to ensure your online safety...

Good luck. By the way, if you ever uninstall your ZA software, I would be interested if you somehow manage to pull that off in "a few minutes", or how long it actually takes...

Lisa2k:

How about an update?

:)

My recommendations.

Running Win98 2.5 Ghz ADSL

http://www3.telus.net/Nitsch/page3.html

:)

No update yet guys..my BI subscribtion still hasn't run out. I will let you know when I install a new one after it expires :) I promise!