Hey guys

Anyone know if windows firewall's safety is good enough to prevent from getting hacked, ddos'd, and all of the essentials?
I've been using Comodo for a while but recently its been causing me more hassle than good, disconnecting my internet for 30minutes, whenever it requests to allow or block something. So it gets very annoying.

So if anyone knows if windows firewall is near the safety levels of other firewalls such as comodo,outpost, etc,( talking the free ones) please let me know

Thank you in advance
RB

To the best of my knowledge, the MS firewall in XP only reviews (and blocks) incoming packets. This means that outgoing packets, which may very well be malware "calling home" are not reviewed. Moreover, MS firewall is deficient in reporting compared to more robust firewalls.
If you are dissatisfied with Comodo, you could certainly try Zone Alarm, another popular free firewall, or one of those listed here:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic3616.html

Regards,
John

The Windows XP firewall protects against port scanning but has limitations and it is no replacement for a robust 3rd-party two-way personal firewall.

• The XP firewall is not a full featured firewall. Normal firewalls allow you to specifically control each TCP and UDP port but XP’s firewall does not provide you with this capability. Instead, it takes a point and click approach to enabling or disabling a few common ports.
• The XP firewall does a good job of monitoring, examining and blocking inbound traffic but makes no attempt to filter or block outbound traffic like most 3rd-party personal firewalls.
• Thus, the XP firewall does not identify which programs attempt to initiate outbound network or Internet communications nor does it block the traffic when suspicious activity occurs.
  • This feature can be helpful in preventing many types of malware attacks that may attempt to open ports or communicate with outside servers without the user's knowledge or consent. It also means that if your system has been compromised, a hacker could use your machine as part of a distributed denial of service attack.
• By default, Windows Firewall rejects all incoming traffic unless that traffic is in response to a previous outgoing request. If you're running Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), Windows Firewall is turned on by default. If you Firewall is not turned on by default, then your using an unpatched OS and need to update your system to SP2.

If you choose to use a 3rd-party firewall, you need to disable the Windows firewall. Using two software firewalls on a single computer could cause issues with connectivity to the Internet or other unexpected behavior. Further, running multiple software firewalls can cause conflicts that are hard to identify and troubleshoot. Only one of the firewalls can receive the packets over the network and process them. Sometimes you may even have a conflict that causes neither firewall to protect your connection. However, you can use a hardware firewall (your router) and a software firewall (Kerio or ZoneAlarm) in conjunction. For more information see "The Differences and Features of Hardware & Software Firewalls".

• Understanding and Using Firewalls
• What is a Firewall
• How Firewalls Work

I use Ashampoo Firewall(free version)
and it is quite good
all you need is your email address to receive the serial and that's all!!