Barry and all, As I said, I have tried a number of Firewalls including Zone Alarm, Sygate, Tiny Personal Firewall, Conceal and ( very briefly) Zone Alarm Pro and was never really happy with any because of the resources they required and the footprint. I decided to try the FREE version of Outpost.
I like the way Outpost is open to configuration. One can build their own plug-ins if desired. It is very user friendly, intuitive and sets a good context. They also have two PDF guides for download on use and quick start. I would advise they be read in order to get on top of the many features offered, although the firewall can be used as is out of the box. I am now experimenting with the plug-ins. Particularly the ad blocker. What a surprise I had when I went to uninstall ZA, to install Outpost, I was cued that ZA did not uninstall. After a bit of investigating I found the driver for ZA is loaded from the registry in the Shared DLLs/ I am running WIN98SE so am not sure about other platforms, but the culprit for me was found here in the registry: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SharedDLLs" This is where windows loads its stuff at startup. After you get there look for any reference to VSDATA95.VXD. I also did a thorough search through my registry and eliminated ALL reference to VSDATA95. I did a file snoop in the VSDATA95.VXD file and discovered it was indeed a Zone Alarm file. That VXD file is the virtual driver for the firewall and Outpost doesn't like to see it. I am furious that Zone Alarm would not clean it up on uninstall. The driver keeps getting loaded even when one takes out the ZA program. There is a bit of clean up necessary to get rid of the log files as well. They are stored in the Internet Logs Folder :( I then did a disk search and eliminated the VSDATA95.VXD file from the HD. So far so good and I have not found any probs with windows yet. But I have not done a thorough SFC yet either. Good hunting, Roger >Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 19:00:24 -0500 >From: Barry Aronson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: Re: PCWorks: Re: Agnitum Firewall > >At 17:02 4/15/2002 -0600, you wrote: > >Hi Clint, > > > >I tried Sygate, Tiny Personal Firwall ( it has another name now ), Zone > >Alarm and Zone Alarm Pro and finally Agnitum. I don't know ZAP. I like > >Agnitum because of the flexibility of settings and the open > >architecture. I am working with the "plug-ins" that come with it > >now. There are 6 plug-ins that give some control over Ads (like pop-ups, > >etc.) DNS caching, attachments, Content, attacks and active content. I > >have much to learn here, but so far I am very pleased. > >- Regards, > >Roger > > > > > >>Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 00:57:58 -0500 > >>From: "[EMAIL PROTECTED] -Clint Hamilton" > >><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >>Subject: Re: PCWorks: Re: Agnitum Firewall > >> > >>Roger how does that firewall program compare to > >>http://www.sygate.com/swat/free/default.php ? I ran tests > >>comparing Sygate pro with ZAP, and it worked better than ZAP, > >>plus it consumed LESS resources and RAM. > >>- -Clint > > >Roger! I believe Clint meant by ZAP= ZoneAlarm Pro :) What exactly is >more intriguing about Outpost compared to ZoneAlarm? I have followed >Agnitum for years and when they announced Outpost in February I was >intrigued but not enough to un-install ZoneAlarm and install Outpost. It >sounded like a sales pitch all the hype about it, but I have an open mind >and also know you casually enough to understand that you would not install >and configure it if it was not worthwhile to pursue. > >At your leisure off-list let me know some more about your adventures in >Desktop firewalls. > >Thanks, > > >>Barry ~ [EMAIL PROTECTED] ============= PCWorks Mailing List ================= Don't see your post? Check our posting guidelines & make sure you've followed proper posting procedures, http://pcworkers.com/rules.htm Contact list owner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Unsubscribing and other changes: http://pcworkers.com =====================================================
