Firewall

[Jus!]

Hi!

In addition to the firewall that is included with XP, does anyone recommend
the Norton Personal Firewall? Or are the firewalls that are available over
the net for free just as effective?

Thanks for your assistance!
Jus

 

[MikeP]

Personally, I stay away from Norton products.
Use Zone Alarm firewall from www.zonelabs.com

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

Use the XP firewall. Or use a third party one. There is no reason to use
both. The XP firewall is somewhat limited in configurability, and only
blocks incoming traffic. Third-party ones give you a bit more control.

http://www.kerio.com/kpf_home.html
http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/home.jsp
http://www.tinysoftware.com/home/tiny2?la=EN

Don't need to waste money on Norton's.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

In

In addition to the firewall that is included with XP, does anyone
recommend the Norton Personal Firewall? Or are the firewalls that are
available over the net for free just as effective?

Just as with other classes of products, you'll find partisans of
just about all of them. Personally, I use and am happy with, the
free version of ZoneAlarm.

 

[Darrell]

I've used Norton Anti-virus and Internet Security for years. It is
excellent.

 

[Please reply to newsgroup.]

Hi!

In addition to the firewall that is included with XP, does anyone recommend
the Norton Personal Firewall? Or are the firewalls that are available over
the net for free just as effective?

Thanks for your assistance!
Jus

In my experiences, the free version of Zone Alarm works great.
www.zonelabs.com

 

[Please reply to newsgroup.]

Personally, I stay away from Norton products.
Use Zone Alarm firewall from www.zonelabs.com

Why would you stay away from Norton products? I have SystemWorks on my
computer and my only problem is that now, if you have used the A: drive,
the computer reads the drive for five seconds when logging off or
shutting down. I would RECOMMEND Norton products!

 

[Shane]

Why would you stay away from Norton products? I have SystemWorks on my
computer and my only problem is that now, if you have used the A: drive,
the computer reads the drive for five seconds when logging off or
shutting down. I would RECOMMEND Norton products!

LiveUpdate causes numerous problems - though perhaps more in 9x than NT.

System Check/WinDoctor always report problems that do not exist and in
addition Repair All will almost always make inappropriate 'repairs', notably
associating shortcuts and reg keys with the wrong application. No problem if
you switch to Advanced View and go through each problem/proposed solution
one by one, ignoring those you don't understand - but the existence of the
Repair All option and the default of allowing the program to choose
solutions isn't helpful and might be said to be the actual problem.

I've tested NU/NSW 2000/2001/2003 on Win95B/98SE/ME/XP and the problem is
unchanged in all scenarios.

Shane

 

[Please reply to newsgroup.]

LiveUpdate causes numerous problems - though perhaps more in 9x than NT.

System Check/WinDoctor always report problems that do not exist and in
addition Repair All will almost always make inappropriate 'repairs', notably
associating shortcuts and reg keys with the wrong application. No problem if
you switch to Advanced View and go through each problem/proposed solution
one by one, ignoring those you don't understand - but the existence of the
Repair All option and the default of allowing the program to choose
solutions isn't helpful and might be said to be the actual problem.

I've tested NU/NSW 2000/2001/2003 on Win95B/98SE/ME/XP and the problem is
unchanged in all scenarios.

Shane

That's interesting, because I've never had a problem with Live Update
and I used One Button Checkup, it made repairs, and I haven't had a problem.

 

[Shane]

That's interesting, because I've never had a problem with Live Update
and I used One Button Checkup, it made repairs, and I haven't had a problem.

The Live Update thing doesn't - apparently - happen to everyone. And maybe
they've even - finally - fixed it now, though I'd no longer recommend NAV
due to DRM. I didn't have a problem with LU - though for the most part used
Intelligent Updater anyway, a more sensible option as defs are up-to-date,
whereas using LU defs are up-to-date in the same way a stopped clock is
right twice a day.

I stopped using NAV when support for 2001 was pulled - with no recourse to
existent patches, iow Symantec were saying 'buy the latest version or go
f*** yourself'.

The auto repair feature, otoh - personally I believe those who 'haven't had
a problem' simply haven't hit the shortcut yet that launches the wrong
application and/or when something else has gone wrong, never connect it with
NU/NSW.

Essentially it's a registry cleaner/repair tool and the only one of _those_
that can be trusted can because it doesn't do very much. The ones that
should be trusted the least are those that do a great deal. Given the
thousands of registry keys, sub keys and their values it's quite possible
the errors will be non-apparent for a period of time, but likely that when
they do begin to show (accumulate?) the repair history will be so confused
as to be all but worthless.

There are times when System Check/WinDoctor will - like MS's own RegClean -
remove keys/values that were previously correct, but more typically - if you
look at genuine errors using the Advanced View - an 'orphaned'
commonly-named shortcut, eg Setup.exe will have many suggested solutions -
being, basically, pointing it in turn at every other Setup.exe on the disk.
Often the correct solution is not the first offered, but hitting Repair All
it will be the one used.

Long time since I looked and I don't recall, but I expect like other reg
cleaner/repair tool vendors Symantec still advise against making changes to
the registry unless you know what each change entails. I feel confident
enough to assume that's the case. Then there shouldn't be a Repair All
feature at all, should there?

Repair All is there because the market Symantec (and competitors in paid-for
registry cleaning/repair) are after is the 'don't know what they're doing'
market, the 'buy on the sole basis of brand name' sector. Like Coca Cola
were going for the mineral water market.

Shane