RE: My experiment with a third party firewall
From: Ken Gardner (KenGardner_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 04/20/05
- Next message: kerrf: "computer invaded toded with .pf and modem hijacked"
- Previous message: Rick \: "Re: How does Microsoft prevent people from using pirated Volume License Windows XP?"
- In reply to: Ken Gardner: "My experiment with a third party firewall"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 20:11:02 -0700
"Ken Gardner" wrote:
> As many of the regulars here know by now, I am generally a critic of third
> party firewalls for Windows with SP2 installed (which probably puts me in a
> distinct minority).
>
> Well, as an experiment, I decided to try the CA firewall (an ICSA Labs
> certified version of the Zone Alarm firewall, I believe). I managed to
> install it successfully on the first try by turning off the Windows SP2
> firewall BEFORE rebooting (also, I'm using the latest version of EZ Armor,
> which only recently became available). In the past, I have had a horrible
> time trying to install it correctly.
>
> Anyway, after successfully rebooting, my first test was a speed test to see
> if the firewall was slowing down my Internet connection. It isn't. If
> anything, it was slightly faster with the CA firewall, although the
> difference was so small that the difference was probably random.
>
> Now I am making sure that it isn't blocking any of the programs that
> legitimately need Internet access -- a problem (or, more precisely, an
> annoyance) that I have had in the past. So far, it isn't, at least not with
> the default settings. It helped that upon installing the firewall, I tried
> to access the Internet with every program that I regularly use.
>
> Anyway, I expect to have an occasional hiccup along the way, but if I can go
> two weeks without any major problems, I may change my mind completely about
> these third party firewalls, or at least this one. I still would recommend
> to manage your privacy settings yourself through Internet Explorer (or
> Firefox) rather than letting EZ Firewall do it, but I am pleasantly surprised
> at how well the firewall itself is working out so far.
For the record, I didn't have any problems until the end of the fourth day.
My Internet connection then stopped working. I tried rebooting my cable
modem, but that didn't work. Then I turned everything off, rebooted my cable
modem, and turned everything back on again. I got to the login screen, typed
in my password, then witnessed something that I have never seen from XP since
I first got it in 2001: my machine crashed on startup. I cold rebooted
again, and this time my machine did start up normally. I went straight to
Event Viewer, which informed me that the culprit was the service that runs
with the CA firewall along with "corrupted" log files that I recognized as
part of the firewall as well.
I immediately uninstalled the program, and I am back to using Windows
firewall. Lesson learned.
Ken
- Next message: kerrf: "computer invaded toded with .pf and modem hijacked"
- Previous message: Rick \: "Re: How does Microsoft prevent people from using pirated Volume License Windows XP?"
- In reply to: Ken Gardner: "My experiment with a third party firewall"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]
Relevant Pages
|
