While I was on this website doing security checks on my old Windows 98 computer, it pointed out that my computer is vulnerable because some ports are open. And that made me remember that I haven't installed a firewall on it!

So can anyone suggest to me some good firewall software? Preferably one that has a low or zero price? It would really help my security.

Many thanks in advance.

I don't know any free firewalls, but why wold you want to trust a free firewall to protect you computer? That would be asking for trouble because of the possible vulnerabilities it could possess.

But if your looking for some free firewall's try this site out they review free firewalls from the looks of it.

http://www.iopus.com/guides/free-firewall.htm

Well, I cant really tell you how secure Mcafee was when I had it but I never had any viruses that I knew of. One thing about Mcafee I liked was the feature that showed the blocked viruses or attempts to access your computer. When Mcafee would block something it would show a detailed report about it, it would even show the exact location where the attack was sent from.

If you are looking for a free firewall I would go with just looking on http://www.download.com/ for one.

But if you are looking for a paid one I would go with AVG.





This post has been edited by electriic ink: Nov 18 2006, 07:08 PM

The first thing you should do is upgrade to XP. Win98 is a hackers dream with all its security flaws. Then Id download Zone Alarm. Ive been using it for quite a bit and I love it.

A very good firewall is the zone alarm firewall

I'll have a look at this.

In my expirience, McAfee is faulty, so it is not to be trusted. Also I used to use McAfee on my XP COmputer and everytime I tried to use it's interface, it crashed 'cos it was so damn laggy. Download.com is also too laggy, even on my broadband connection. As for AVG Firewall, well I'm currently using AVG Viruscan Free and that rocks, but I don't have much money... so I'll think about it.

I know that. In fact, just four months ago Windows stopped all support for 98, which annoyed me. But this is a shared comp, so I'd have to ask my folks if I could do an upgrade. And they don't have the money for it.

That one didn't work for me. I tried it before.

This post has been edited by NDPA: Nov 18 2006, 10:45 PM

Well since you have said that you didn't like Zone Alarm, you could try Norton Internet Security trial, and if you think that its good and does the job well then buy it. I have used many different firewalls, the windows XP SP2 firewall, Zone Alarm, Norton Internet Security and another that i don't know the name of. In my experience Windows firewall by itself is useless, Zone Alarm is too frustrating trying to work out how to get it to allow a port or program, and Norton Internet Security while i had it working was great, i didn't seem to get any viruses or anything else. If you don't want to try Norton as many people say it eats up resources which i don't believe, then you could always download a free virus scanner and firewall combo such as Avast, I am running it and its working great. I'm pretty sure it comes with a firewall, plus the updates are downloaded by itself and it has a little sound file telling you that the virus protection is updated. Try it and tell us what you think, if you don't like it i'll suggest a new one.

I've tried many of the commercial firewalls...

I kinda liked Zone Alarm till it caused some problems to my pc, not mentioning some sensitive ports not being protected by the program...

The firewall I really like and using now is the one given by the Mcafee Internet Security Suite...Of course, the antivirus made my pc be soooo sluggish so I uninstalled it leaving the firewall in place...

Still, it's one of the few "programs" that haven't caused me a single problem....yet