I'll keep it short and sweet...unlike my other posts.

What is a good choice for a free firewall application, that does NOT hog system resources?

Thx,
Kevin

ASRock K7S41GX
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton 1850MHz
512MB DDR333
WD 160GB IDE HDD
ATI Radeon 9200 128MB AGP8x

Do you want just free or free with the best protection?.

I use Comodo and it's free...was a little buggy at first i.e. not receiving all updates and not finishing the scan(anti-virus). But I just re-installed the Firewall and has worked great ever since...and I did another scan and had no problems...as far as hogging system resources...i really can't tell the difference between norton and comodo except there are a couple less processes running. I have 28 running now and before I had like 31. I really like the interface too. It's very informative and easy to understand.

Bless

I use Comodo and it works great for me

Hopefully my advice will help you...Please post back with your results....thanks

Murr,
Free, no spyware, works well is what I meant. Sorry about the confusion.

Comodo? Never heard of it. I guess it can't hurt to try.

Anyone else have any other ideas, please post them, but I will be testing this one.

Thanks,
Kevin

ASRock K7S41GX
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton 1850MHz
512MB DDR333
WD 160GB IDE HDD
ATI Radeon 9200 128MB AGP8x

KiShKoN ( Kevin ) wrote.
"Anyone else have any other ideas, please post them, but I will be testing this one"
Make sure you do this.
Comodo has > Scan for known applications. Refer below.
http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/5157/comodo20060830tc3.jpg
=====================================
Is the XP SP2 firewall getting a raw deal?
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=81

I posed my question that way because so many responces are 'Zonealarm'. Yeh, it's free but as the leaktests show, it's outbound protection is 'abysmal'. And it's ironic to see even 'XpUser4Real' has left his comfort zone to learn that there are better freebies for protection to use and is now recommending them.
Another excellent freebie is Jetico There are downloadable rulesets to use to minimize the popups.

I used ZoneAlarm (the free one) before they dropped support for it. It is now permanently out-of-date, and therefore useless.

The reason I need a 3rd-party firewall is that I can't get MS updates anymore...which means the firewall will remain in the same state it was at my last Windows Update (did the SP2 firewall even receive updates at all?).

I'm at school ATM, so I can't view the imageshack file, but I researched it and know what you mean, Johnw.

Online reviews rave about Comodo...and based on the (albeit very short) time that I got to see it in action so far, I think it's a keeper. Earlier, I had the firewall running, I was re-installing Half-Life 2, running a virus scan (AVG Free), and running a spyware scan (Spybot) all at the same time (no major performance issues). I could have never done that with ZoneAlarm, I know that from experience.

Speed, capability, ease of use, and price are my main concerns with software. Of course, with free software, adware/spyware are issues as well. Comodo is clean...so I'm probably going to reccomend it to a few people I know now.

Thanks a ton,
Kevin

ASRock K7S41GX
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton 1850MHz
512MB DDR333
WD 160GB IDE HDD
ATI Radeon 9200 128MB AGP8x

KiShKoN ( Kevin ) wrote.
I can't get MS updates anymore...
BigFix Solutions
http://help.bigfix.com/
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,7538,00.asp
========================================
http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-06-12.htm
Thanks, Bryan. The direct link to the "Daisy" page is one level down in
the above site, at http://vtntug.w2k.vt.edu/daisy.htm
Windows Update itself can be problematic, as can the updates it offers.
Alternatives like this, plus third-party sites like http://help.bigfix.com/ and even Microsoft's own separate "Baseline
Security Analyzer" (a new version released just last week, and still free, is at http://snurl.com/ksb or http://tinyurl.com/dxnv ) can help ensure that your system really has all the patches, updates, and bugfixes it needs!
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/tools/Tools/MBSAhome.asp
http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/mbsa/index.shtml
===========================================
Daisy
http://vtntug.w2k.vt.edu/daisy.htm
http://support.cybertronpc.com/cti-kb/cache/181.html
http://opensource.w2k.vt.edu/home.php
=======================================
WindizUpdate
http://windowsupdate.62nds.com/whyuse.php
If you are still not convinced that WindizUpdate is the site for you, please check out our page titled "do we need to say any more? http://windowsupdate.62nds.com/whywelovems.php
=======================================
AutoPatcher XP
http://www.autopatcher.com/WebAPXP.htm
http://www.autopatcher.com/faqxp.htm
http://www.autopatcher.com/ScreenXP.htm
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail.php3?fid=1067103058
===========================================
XPCREATE
http://greenmachine.msfnhosting.com/XPCREATE/
==========================================
HOW TO CREATE A FULLY PATCHED WINDOWS XP SP2 AT INSTALL
http://www.vorck.com/hfslip.html

Wow...a lot of stuff there!

I don't have the time right now to read everything in-depth but I see at least a couple useful things in there.

Apart from the slipstreaming the SP thing, though, because I have a copy of XP Corporate that came with SP2.

Thanks again, hopefully I can get some security updates now!
-Kevin

ASRock K7S41GX
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton 1850MHz
512MB DDR333
WD 160GB IDE HDD
ATI Radeon 9200 128MB AGP8x