Hey guys, I just got Service Pack 2, and like it a lot. I am wondering something, is it fairly safe to let the XP firewall stay on, even though I have Sygate going too? I know we all agree that running two firewalls is generally not a good idea, but does this apply to two 3rd party firewalls only, or two firewalls period?

Evening, There have been many discussions about your question. The general agreement is that it is best to have just one firewall running to prevent possible conflicts. Remember, the XP firewall only monitors inbound traffic and does not care what tries to phone home from your computer. Try doing a Search on your question on the left side of this webpage. It should bring up a lot of posts about your question. Just my thoughts, XDon

I used both without problems but now just use Sygate as its a lot safer than the XP-firewall.. 808

Well, my thinking was that XP does a decent job at blocking incoming, but it can't protect from outgoing, which is where Sygate comes in. So far, having both is not causing issues (that I can see that is). I'm also behind a hardware firewall.

The XP SP2 firewall will prevent unwanted outgoing traffic / block ports until you allow them.

I wasn't aware of that. Is that something that just changed with SP2?

MS knowledge base 842242 "After you install Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), some programs may seem not to work. By default, Windows Firewall is enabled and blocks unsolicited connections to your computer. This article discusses how to make an exception and enable a program to run by adding it to the list of exceptions. This procedure permits the program to work as it did before the service pack was installed." Maybe I assumed too much, but there is a list of programs at the above site that will not work until you configure the firewall for them.