TW Blog :: Archives for November 2004

Seeking Firewall Advice

Relates to Security

I am looking for a good reliable firewall tool to run on my Windows 98 system. The story so far…

Once and for all I kissed goodbye to Norton Internet Security last weekend. The registration period had expired and I decided it was time to try something new. Two hours of registry trawling later, 200MB of storage reclaimed, and with vastly improved performance I was content in the knowledge my system was clean. Next step was to install my chosen alternative, BitDefender Pro. I have recommended this AV tool to a number of clients and read nothing but good reviews for it.

Initial tests went well and my system was powering along, until the blue screen of death reared its ugly head! A quick browse of the BitDefender site, and hidden away in the FAQ I discovered that BitDefender Version 8 had been reported to be causing a system freeze on rare occassions with Windows 98. (I was going to link to this item, but the bug has now been changed to a different issue!?). I contacted the support team, who were very responsive, and provided some system reports to help track down the bug. But, while I have been waiting for further feedback, the software has become more and more unstable exhibiting every bug that had been fixed in Patch 7.2.11 for the previous version! I am a little jaded that these lingering bugs on Windows 98 were not made more apparant on the website resulting in a considerable waste of my time. However, I would still recommend this AV software to a user of more recent Windows versions and hope that eventually the bugs will be fixed.

In the meantime, I now plan to uninstall BitDefender before it tears my system apart, and have decided to look solely for a firewall tool as replacement for the time being. I have had a look at all the following:

• Sygate Personal Firewall Pro
• ZoneAlarm Pro
• Outpost Firewall Pro
• Armor2Net Personal Firewall
• iSafer (Source Forge)

All of them seem to have positive and negative reviews around the web. So, I am seeking advice from anyone who might have a recommendation or experience using any of these or an alternative. Obviously advice from Windows 98 would be beneficial, but my logs only show 15% of visits using this platform. So, if you have stumbled across this entry, I would appreciate your opinions regardless. Cheers.

Posted on Friday, Nov 05, 2004 at 22:31:25.