Right now I run Norton Systemworks with Norton Personal Firewall 2006. My subscription expires for the NSW 2005 in February. I have heard alot of negatives along with some positives about Norton. It seems to be working ok, all except the problem in my previous topic about the PING results. I still don't understand that(no replies). Some reviews rate the PC-cillin Internet Security 2006 as being a good choice. They do say that the firewall needs improvements though. Has anyone used the PC-cillin? If so how is it?

I personally have been using a freeware antivirus, and firewall for several year. I have not use PC-illin. But the freeware equivalent are second to none. They are light on resources, reliable, and secure.
Here is a list of what the members here use and recommend...

Antivirus (Run only one)
AVG Free Edition Antivirus (I personally use)
Avast Home Edition Antivirus Freeware
AntiVir Personal Edition Classic Freeware
BitDefender 8 Free Edition AntiVirus Freeware

Firewalls (Use only one)
Zone Alarm
SyGate Personal Edition
OutPost Firewall Free
Jetico Personal Free
Kerio Personal Firewall

They are all freeware, and are full featured. I believe you will be pleasantly suprized.

Good luck and Merry Christmas.

Before I put the NPF 2006 on I downloaded the ZoneAlarm firewall but I had trouble using it. Do you know if their firewall is already set by default? I think what I need to do is look around and see if I can find some operation and set-up instructions. I'm not too sharp on setting up the firewall.

Firewalls don't play nice with each other. If must make sure one of them is totally removed from your system. If not they will fight each other and cause conflicts.
If it were me I would go with ZA.

My dsl modem has a firewall and the WinXp has one also. I do only use one at a time though. I deactivated the modems wall and the XP's firewall. Currently I use only the NPF 2006. Thanks.

Not the hardware firewall. It is a must for good LAN security. A hardware firewal will not interfer and is an excellent means of defence.
The firewall in XP should have been disabled by NPF and/or ZA.

The modem is a 2Wire Homeportal 1000HG that SBC Yahoo sends out with their DSL package. It has a firewall that can be activated or deactivated. Sbc has another software firewall they offer too. They said not to run both. Is it ok for me to use the 2Wire modem firewall along with the NPF 2006? Thanks.

I run a hardware and a software firewall. I have on built into my Linksys router, and I use SyGate. No problems.

Thanks aclan! I'm going to activate it now. The 2Wire gives the options:"allow individual applications" or "maximum protection" disallow unsolicitated inbound traffic. The default setting is to allow individual applications. What do you think, the max?

Acklan, I activated the 2Wire modem firewall, it has 2 choices. Allow individual applications or maximum protection. I put it on Max. Does that sound ok? Everything seems to be working fine and the system passed on the GRC and Sygate security tests.

As long as you are secure I believe you are ok. When you refer to GRC you are talking about the Shields Up® test? Gibson Research Corp.
I think you are will protected.

That's correct on the Shields Up test. After going through all of the settings on the 2Wire modem I found the "stealth" setting and the "ping" setting. I selected both of them and checked the "max protection". So now it looks like this: Norton Systemworks 2005, NPF 2006, SBC Anti-Spy, Webroot SpySweeper, Ad-aware SE.

If you have the memory resources I would also run...

Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta (2000,and XP only)
Spybot

They both has active, real time scan and will intercept registry changes.

Thanks for the help. It's appreciated.

Any time. If you need more help please feel free to ask. I'm always here.

I had Spybot S&D and it got to where it wouldn't update. The updates would come up but they didn't download. I took it off about a month ago. After your suggestion I downloaded it again and it looks like a new or at least updated version. As soon as I put it on it had new updates to be downloaded. Everything went ok. Thanks again..........Socom