Comodo

[shazzabell]

I've just downloaded Comodo firewall as I've heard it's good. But on trying to install it tells me to uninstall any third party firewall running. Does Windows have a built in firewall? Am I meant to disable it? If so, how?

[rojash]

Yes, windows has a rather pathetic one-way only firewall.
Start/Settings/Control Panel/Windows Firewall.
You can turn the whole thing on and off from the General Tab, or from the Advanced tab, you can turn it on and off for individual network devices.

[Buenchico]

Pre-XP versions of Windows don't have a built-in firewall. XP & Vista both incorporate their own firewall.

These instructions, to turn off Windows firewall, are for XP with SP2 but they're probably similar for other versions of XP and for Vista:

Go to the Control Panel.
Open Windows Firewall.
The 'General' tab should be pre-selected. If it's not, click on it.
Click to put a check-mark next to 'Off'.
Click 'OK'.

Unlike anti-virus software (where you should never have two competing programs running simultaneously), you could probably have two firewall programs running simultaneously, without any conflicts. However, it's probably still best to have just one firewall running.

Chris

[rojash]

You should not run two firewalls. The quote below is from the Microsoft Firewall FAQ, which can be found at:

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/prote ct/firewall.mspx

Quote:
"Q. Should I use both the built-in firewall and a software firewall from a different company on my Windows XP computer?

A. No. Running multiple software firewalls is unnecessary for typical home computers, home networking, and small-business networking scenarios. Using two firewalls on the same connection could cause issues with connectivity to the Internet or other unexpected behavior."

[shazzabell]

Thank you both.