RE: adjusting firewall in windows2000

From: Karl Levinson [x y], mvp (levinson_k_at_despammed.com)
Date: 10/04/04 

Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 13:03:12 -0700

I think they're giving you bad advice. The most typical problem with
firewalls is that it blocks you entirely from doing something, not that it
slows down the connection visibly. If your firewall *WAS* causing slow
performance, "turning down the firewall" would not be the correct thing to
recommend.

If other things on your computer that do not use the Internet [MS Word,
games, etc.] are slow, then you may need to do some computer tuning. When
your computer is slow, press the CTRL-ALT-DELETE keys together to bring up
Task Manager, and look to see what if any processes are using up a lot of
free CPU time, and make sure there is sufficient "System Idle Process" CPU
time. Click on CPU to sort the processes by which ones are using the most
CPU time.

Also, use the software below to look at what is configured to start

http://securityadmin.info/faq.asp#startup

Make sure you are not infected with a virus. Be sure you are running
anti-virus software that is set to update itself automatically every week or
so. www.grisoft.com and Bit Defender are two free anti-virus programs.
Also, www.zonealarm.com, www.kerio.com and www.sygate.com are all free
firewall programs, you should consider using one.

Run Scandisk and Defrag.

You could also consider running through these steps to see whether your
computer has been hacked:

http://securityadmin.info/faq.asp#hacked

If you have another computer you can borrow that is not slow, plug that in
and see whether DSL internet is slow on that computer. If it isn't, then you
can suspect your computer needs some help. If it is, then you can suspect
your DSL needs some help.

Slow DSL can be caused by poor DSL / phone line quality, by the distance you
are from the phone company CO, and by a DSL line misconfigured by the DSL
company. They should be able to monitor your line and see if anything is
wrong on the line.

"george" wrote:

> I am getting a slow signal from my dsl provider and they
> have advised me to turn down the firewall in my computer.
> I am running a Dell with Windows2000. Can someone tell me
> how to do this. Thank you.
>

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