- There are many freeware firewalls such as, PCTools Firewall Plus, Online Armor, recently released, Outpost Firewall free 7 suite
http://free.agnitum.com/ and PrivateFirewall.
Many forum users are using these:
- PCTools Firewall Plus. This is a relatively user friendly firewall, however, for a time there were problems with this firewall and avast 6.x auto updates (blocked) and there didn't seem to be a way to resolve this other than to uninstall the firewall. There has been a new version of PCTools Firewall Plus released, but I don't know if that resolved this issue as I don't use it.
- Online Armor for the most parts fine but it has caused some users grief after avast program updates and that is something you have to watch out for.
- PrivateFirewall,
http://www.privacyware.com/personal_firewall.html- Outpost Free Suite 7, which should still provide good protection,
http://free.agnitum.com/. Whilst this is a suite, when you install it, it detects avast and asks if you have it installed, answering Yes will mean it doesn't install the antivirus, anti-spyware and web control modules to maintain compatibility.
Should you choose Outpost.
- Outpost Exclusions - Whilst Outpost would have you exclude its folder from avast scans, I don't feel that is required, if outpost is running in its compatibility mode with no anti-spyware and no web control modules running.
Personally other than a single file exclusion I don't believe you need exclude the Outpost folder, I haven't in all of the time that I have been using avast and outpost together and that is many years.
This is the file and path that I have in the File System Shield, Expert Settings, Exclusions section, C:\Program Files\Agnitum\Outpost Firewall Pro\wl_hook.dll (easiest it to copy and paste this full path). This file is as its name implies a hooking tool that outpost uses to monitor activity also and is the only file where I ever had any issue with avast.