Bye Guys

[true indian]

oh please! dont leave this forum...


i was also a earlier user of norton and mcafee...

and honestly they left viruses on my old desktop so had to dipose it my laptop now runs avast and comodo i been clean from past 1 year...

[bob3160]

oh please! dont leave this forum..

People stay on this forum because they like it here.
Begging isn't necessary. 

[rogo]

I spend all day today trying to get PrivateFirewall to run with Avast 6. Multiple unistall and reinstalls of both with no sucess. PF runs just fine w/o Avast 6. Install Avast 6 and PF GUI is borked. Nothing new here since this has been discussed at length in prior postings.

Installed ver. of Norton AV 2012 I had laying around and all is fine. Amazing how much faster my Internet is now with NAV 2012.

Will revisit Avast again in the future when they get it to work with PF.

I will say I will miss this forum. Great bunch of people here.

DonZ63:

Sorry to see you leave, but this is somewhat a mystery. I ran Private Firewall on my laptop with Avast 6 and no problems whatsoever???  I am running 64 bit Windows 7 Duel Core. The issue IMO is not Avast by any means but with your PC I am sorry to say. And as for Norton I have a license for that and had tried it out.............Norton is second to Avast also IMO....Norton is over rated. If you are stuck on Private Firewall contact their support,and let them figure out what is going on.............it is NOT Avast fault.

[Fitter]

I highly doubt that you'll convince anyone here to switch to Symantec.

Not my intention.

However, I do think that a person should explore all the current facts before they start bashing a security product. These include recent AV cert lab tests plus professional and user reviews. Then make an intelligent and informed choice based on your individual requirements.

Sorry to see you leave read your informative posts for awhile, Nav 2010-12 state of the art wish it was free this forum is way out of date on current AV solutions ie Nav/Norton 2005-2007 was the dregs but !!!!!!!!!!

[DonZ63]

Sorry to see you leave, but this is somewhat a mystery. I ran Private Firewall on my laptop with Avast 6 and no problems whatsoever???  I am running 64 bit Windows 7 Duel Core. The issue IMO is not Avast by any means but with your PC I am sorry to say. And as for Norton I have a license for that and had tried it out.............Norton is second to Avast also IMO....Norton is over rated. If you are stuck on Private Firewall contact their support,and let them figure out what is going on.............it is NOT Avast fault.

I tired this combo multiple times trying every option I could thing of. If you check the link I posted previously in this thread, you will see I am not alone on this problem. I did work with PF tech support to no avail.

As someone pointed out, it very well could be hardware related. I am using an AMD quad core processor. I use the AMD SATA 6GB/s drivers versus the stock WIN 7 SATA drivers, etc. It does appear the Avast 6 and PrivateFirewall conbo works for some and not others. Unfortunately, the combo would not work on my Win7 x64 installation.

I definitely wanted a light firewall with HIPS that worked well with WIN 7 x64. PF fit that requirement. I originally had Comodo and Defense+ when I installed WIN 7 x64 but I saw enough to conclude Comodo not ready for WIN 7 x64 regardless of what Comodo claims. Also having used Comodo under XP on other PCs, I know from experience it will eventually take over your PC and bog down performance.

[BNG]

I spend all day today trying to get PrivateFirewall to run with Avast 6. Multiple unistall and reinstalls of both with no sucess. PF runs just fine w/o Avast 6. Install Avast 6 and PF GUI is borked. Nothing new here since this has been discussed at length in prior postings.

Installed ver. of Norton AV 2012 I had laying around and all is fine. Amazing how much faster my Internet is now with NAV 2012.

Will revisit Avast again in the future when they get it to work with PF.

I will say I will miss this forum. Great bunch of people here.

Do you really need another firewall? Both Avast and Windows each have one. I've been using Avast for many years now and it seems more then adequate for the average PC user. To each his own I guess? 

[Pondus]

Do you really need another firewall?

+1   

[DonZ63]

Do you really need another firewall?

With today's ever evolving zero day malware, you definitely need a firewall with HIPS protection. You are kidding yourself if you believe otherwise. If you need further convincing, browse the Avast virus and worms section of this forum and start counting the number of instances of users getting nailed with zero day exploits. Bottom line, no retail available software based anti-malware will protect you 100%. Some products such as DefenseWall come close but are worthless against any existing resident malware.

Malware can "jump" sandboxing. Now you can create a virtual machine and always run your browser from the VM. However, you will have to eventually transfer what you downloaded from the VM to your real OS. I am sure malware creators will develop ways if they already don't exist to detect they are on a VM and remain in a stealth status until transfered to a real OS. Then you have the overhead of maintaining the VM.

I am a firm believer of that old saying "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." One can spend hours or days in many cases removing malware versus responding to occasional alerts from the HIPS. Then there is the cost of having PII data stolen while your infected.  

[bob3160]

Considering that I'm using the Windows Firewall, and work on a clean computer,
I'd say that shoots some holes in your statement.
But, we also have some forum members who check every link they go to through all kinds of
3rd party scans.
So I guess it comes down to just how paranoid one want's to be. 

For me my current protection along with a regular backup scheme has so far always paid off.
 

[Dch48]

I had enough of HIPS in my year of using Comodo. I'll never go that way again. I think the Win 7 Firewall, with outgoing filtering enabled by either the Windows Firewall Notifier or Windows Firewall Control is sufficient.

[Asyn]

I had enough of HIPS in my year of using Comodo.

Well, a HIPS can be quite demanding...

[DonZ63]

Well, a HIPS can be quite demanding

So far PrivateFirewall's HIPS has been the quitest HIPS I have ever used. I have received one popup from the always borked unsigned nvsvc NVidia service and that was it. Now I haven't turned on PF's Process Detection yet so the final verdict is still out.

At this point though, I would say that PrivateFirewall is a firewall with HIPS for the masses. The only configuration change was to set Network Security on the Home Profile to High since I am on a single PC. I also had to set Norton's AV and MBAM's applications to allow from filtered since PF's firewall was blocking some of the dial-outs.

Again a HIPS is only as chatty as you configure it. If your truely paranoid and set it to monitor everything including every outbound connection, of course your going to see a lot of alerts. You can then put on your tin foil covered hat and wait for an alien PC abduction.

BTW - Comodo in it's default Proactive configuation results in Defense+ remaining silent for the most part. The difference in HIPS between default setups of Comdo and PF HIPS is PF is still monitoring all critical OS files whereas Comodo's Defense+ will only do that if you set its settings to maximum ProActive. When you do that, you will see many more alerts. Finally PF has System Anomaly Detection which will detect application run behavior deviations from the norm based on a set percentage value. It's the only HIPS I know of that has that feature. A great way to catch a rogue process in the act!  

[timcan]

Malware can "jump" sandboxing.  

Hi, care to give some examples? Even by PM if you care to. 

[Pondus]

Malware can "jump" sandboxing.  

Hi, care to give some examples? Even by PM if you care to. 

hmmmm....why dont you ask google...then you dont have to wait   

Think sandboxing will stop malware? Here's why you're wrong, Apple
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2011/nov/08/sandboxing-malware-failure

[bob3160]

At this point though, I would say that PrivateFirewall is a firewall with HIPS for the masses.

That's provided you don't use avast!   Not a good choice in my opinion.