1 - after I installed setup_ais.exe a restart was required in the first place, this did not bring up the firewall tab.
2 - using the repair option did not bring up the firewall tab.
3 - uninstalling and reinstalling worked - firewall tab present.
4 - Alas, the result was undesirable. I left the general security level on medium as per default, went in to the application setup, cut WMP off from the network and gave both opera and firefox full access on all ports to the 'net. Unfortunately 9 times out of 10 connection attempts I'd get "cannot locate server" errors from both browsers.
I proceeded to give the webshield full access also, just in case. No improvement. This seems a bit overzealous on the part of the firewall, and I had to uninstall it again even just to be able to log in here to report back and so I guess I'll be reverting to merely using the free antivirus for the time being unless someone can exactly pinpoint what the problem might be.
Not a good first impression. In case you're wondering, I've extensive experience with setting up and configuring wingate, sygate~, tiny~, kerio~, and sunbelt firewall as well as comodo (the latter used to cause bsod on win xp on my main system so I ditched it) not to mention the dreaded zonealarm (e.g. digging it out of people's system because it was behaving more like malware than anything else) - so I've some ideas w.r.t. what expected behaviour should be like.
