Author Topic: Firewall advice  (Read 1042 times)

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Offline justinlee

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Firewall advice
« on: August 29, 2021, 04:20:17 PM »
I am using Avast free, which has served me well for years. For a Firewall I used to use Comodo free firewall and thought it was great, that was until it started to become very buggy and crash on both of my laptops running, Windows 7. So, I removed Comodo and went over to ZoneAlarm free Firewall. I noticed that one of my laptops has begun to run slowly at times, but I put this down to it's age. But! I have since installed ZoneAlarm free Firewall on the other one, and have noticed a lag also, so I'm thinking it's a resource hog.

I am thinking of just uninstalling ZoneAlarm, and go back to using good old Windows Firewall, but since I am using Windows 7, which no longer gets security updates, is this a bad idea?
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) SP1,
Intel Core i5-2410M @2.30GHz, 6GB RAM
AvastFree Antivirus & ZoneAlarm Free.

Offline DavidR

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Re: Firewall advice
« Reply #1 on: August 29, 2021, 05:20:48 PM »
Well your timing couldn't be better as Avast Free is about to get a firewall.

See https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=299095.0 - which sees some actually get the avast free firewall.  Whilst this isn't going out to everyone immediately.

See this extract on that.
Some more clarification about the new Firewall. Only a smaller portion of users will actually get it enabled in 21.7 release as we still want to observe it and test it a bit more before major fullscale on all userbase (of course, only those users who will actually get it are informed about it through our product on their device). You can expect the full-scale to happen in 5-8 weeks. When it comes to upcoming beta releases, all of those will already have it enabled in full.
Windows 10 Home 64bit/ Acer Aspire F15/ Intel Core i5 7200U 2.5GHz, 8GB DDR4 memory, 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD/ avast! free 24.2.6105 (build 24.2.8918.824) UI 1.0.799/ Firefox, uBlock Origin, uMatrix/ MailWasher Pro/ Avast! Mobile Security

Offline justinlee

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Re: Firewall advice
« Reply #2 on: August 30, 2021, 01:40:31 AM »
Sounds good, but is it still safe to use Windows 7 Firewall in the meantime? I know Windows 7 no longer receives security updates, but the fundamentals of it's Firewall should remain the same, right?
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) SP1,
Intel Core i5-2410M @2.30GHz, 6GB RAM
AvastFree Antivirus & ZoneAlarm Free.

Offline DavidR

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Re: Firewall advice
« Reply #3 on: August 30, 2021, 11:42:16 AM »
I can't say as I no longer use win7, but I'm still using the win10 firewall, I don't know if there are any differences in that. 

A google search perhaps, comparison windows 7 Vs windows 10 firewall.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=comparison+windows+7+Vs+windows+10+firewall

There are a lit of hits, but many are old which is understandable.
Windows 10 Home 64bit/ Acer Aspire F15/ Intel Core i5 7200U 2.5GHz, 8GB DDR4 memory, 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD/ avast! free 24.2.6105 (build 24.2.8918.824) UI 1.0.799/ Firefox, uBlock Origin, uMatrix/ MailWasher Pro/ Avast! Mobile Security