can anyone reccomend a lightweight firewall *vista*?

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1

I’m not a big fan of zone alarm either. I used to use sygate firewall religiously but that hasn’t been updated since 04-ish… so no go with vista.

I’m looking for something with a very small footprint, no extra bells and whistles… just a stand alone firewall that can block outgoing and incoming traffic. I heard that vistas built in firewall can do this, but I haven’t figured it out yet… and I don’t really care for M$'s firewall (I’d rather have everything on a blacklist, and add it to a while list as I see fit opposed to the firewall making up rules for me)

2

PC Tools Firewall

http://www.pctools.com/firewall/

works great with vista, nice simple app!

3

thanks for the heads up, trying it now

4

you don’t need one dude.

A hardware NAT is just fine for incoming traffic.

Unless you want to monitor outgoing traffic to the net, you don’t need a firewall.

5

That’s exactly what I’m looking for though (monitoring/blocking outgoing connections). I have some software I don’t want calling home so to speak :smiley:

6

[quote=“JustinH,post:4,topic:39988"”]

you don’t need one dude.

A hardware NAT is just fine for incoming traffic.

Unless you want to monitor outgoing traffic to the net, you don’t need a firewall.

[/quote]

werd. I don’t run a 2-way firewall on my desktop, just my laptops since they roam onto networks that I don’t have control over.

It’s a nice app though, I had never used it until maybe 3 months ago.

Granted I basically never use that laptop because it runs windows so I haven’t used the app a whole lot either.

7

Vista has a firewall built in that is pretty lightweight

8

But it isn’t good… and yeah it’s technically 2-way but it’ll really let anything out.

9

[quote=“Dr.Stevil,post:5,topic:39988"”]

That’s exactly what I’m looking for though (monitoring/blocking outgoing connections). I have some software I don’t want calling home so to speak :smiley:

[/quote]

host file

10

^^ he wants application level blocking methinks.

host file mods are nice and lightweight though lol.

11

windows firewall rule then… and host file

12

yeah you can easily setup firewall rules for specific programs. there really isnt a good reason to be running 3rd party firewall software

13

sure there is… if you want ridiculous functionality…

but for something basic and to the point windows firewall and the host file is just way easier

14

well, I’m all ears if you know how to do it via Vista’s firewall.

I thought I was doing it right… tried blocking an XM radio streamer that I know was using my network connection but even when I blocked it, it kept on streaming. After that I pretty much abandoned it.

Like I said, I just want something as simple as creating a white list of programs that can access the internet/network. Otherwise, until I allow it, it’ll be blocked.

Sygate was exteremly effective for this. It used almost no overhead and had some very nice advanced tools built in (it would tell you if someone was scanning your ports, their IP origin, limit “X” programs to “X” amount of bandwidth, ect). Wish it was still under development. It was worth the $$$ and then some

15

ended up trying pc tools firewall and it worked ok, but didn’t really care for the interface all that much.

went to a program called comodo firewall and it works great. All the features I was looking for but not a very good gui imo. It would also be nice to see the entire list of applications that are blocked/allowed by the firewall, but unfortunately you can’t until their running.

overall though, I’d recommend it if anyone else is looking for a decent firewall