[Godfree]

Hello,

I have windows Vista Home Premium on my new laptop and I cant seem to find myself a firewall that works REALLY well and gives me no issues. These are the one's I've tried:

Norton - Drove me Insane, refuse to install it again

Comodo - Seemed to work great until it wouldnt let windows update function properly. Also it seemed as if I would randomly lose internet connection at random times. I would be surfing and all of a sudden no pages would work in firefox.

Zone Alarm Pro - Great firewall, however it took my computer about 5-10 MINUTES to shut down with any form of Zone Alarm installed, free and pro. It also seemed to really slow down bootup as well. I also experienced the random internet connection dropping.

Aside from these, are there any other firewalls that anyone would suggest for Vista? I loved comodo up until the recent issues it has been giving me. I had to uninstall it to install the update and now I'm running with no firewall to see if that internet connection loss still occurs or not.

[Elvandil]

I use PCTools, but Vista's is very good and there are GUI's available for fine-tuning it. Be sure to turn it off or others will not work correctly if you decide on a third-party one.

[Old Rich]

The Vista firewall is all I am using . .

[Godfree]

Ahhh maybe thats why Comodo and such weren't being nice, I believe Window's was still on, I think I might just stick with windows for the time being, any idea where I could get a GUI to customize it?

[Elvandil]

Originally Posted by Godfree

Ahhh maybe thats why Comodo and such weren't being nice, I believe Window's was still on, I think I might just stick with windows for the time being, any idea where I could get a GUI to customize it?

I thought as much, but left it to you to say. Firewalls don't play well together. They work at driver-level and can mess each other up a lot more than any other 2 incompatible applications.

Most people have had good luck with Comodo. I really liked it on XP, but I followed the beta testing of it and am not completely convinced it is ready for prime-time. Maybe in a couple months. But it deserves a good look (by itself ).

There's one Vista firewall control here:

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/fil....html?tl=nl_lg

Look around and you may find others. There's also the Windows Firewall applet in Control Panel.

To disable it, don't bother fooling around with the controls and take the chance that it will get turned on again by some "helpful" update or security app, bringing you back here with connection problems (Not that we aren't glad to see you. But it would be nice if you visited sometimes without bringing problems with you ). Go to the Services console and disable the service.

[Godfree]

Alright I'll give Comodo another go without Windows Firewall on They do seem to be lacking a bit in th secureness area for prime time I agree, people have been having quite a few similar problems, but I'll give this a shot.

Awww but I know you all love helping me with my seemingly endless supply of computer issues xD