Vista Firewall - are these settings OK?

spookylukey

My new Vista PC arrived today so have been setting it up but just wanted some reassurance/advice with regards the firewall. My old XP PC had Zone Alarm firewall but after reading that the Vista Firewall does a good job I decided to stick with that for the time being. It didn't seem to be turned on so I had to select the settings myself. Would be very grateful if anyone with a techie eye would cast their eye over my screenshot and tell me whether those settings seem ok?





Also, I have installed Avast for anti-virus protection but it also has Windows Defender, I can't work out whether this is anti-virus or anti-spyware I know you should never have two anti-virus running so would be grateful if anyone could tell me what it is!

Thanks in advance for any input

albertross_2

Firewall is on, the outbound protection is not the same as ZA, you won't get prompted.

Keep avast, defender is antispyware

gremlin666_2

Windows defender is spyware/maleware

spookylukey

albertross wrote: »

Firewall is on, the outbound protection is not the same as ZA, you won't get prompted.

Keep avast, defender is antispyware

Thanks, when you say the outbound protection is not the same as ZA do you mean it's not as good as ZA? Would you advise ditching Windows Firewall and downloading Zone Alarm?

Edited to add:

It talks about 'inbound/otbound connections that do/do not match a rule are blocked'. I haven't set any 'rules' up, would the 'rules' automatically be there or do I need to set them up?

albertross_2

inbound it will protect you (as will a router), outbound you won't get prompted, so if you prefer that, then try ZA or another firewall with outbound prompts.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0106.mspx

BillScarab

I run Vista and I use Zone Alarm. Although the firewall in Vista is better than in XP it is still not perfect.

Windows firewall does not block all outgoing traffic by default whereas Zone Alarm does, so in ZA you have to explicitly give permission for a program to access the net. As other have said defender looks for spyware not viruses.

KILL_BILL

are you using a router ora normal usb modem

if you are using a router then you can set up ports