I am a new user of Avast Internet Security. I noticed after installing Avast 7 that the Windows 7 firewall was still running. I am assuming that I needed to disable the Windows Firewall if the Avast Firewall is running. Is this correct? Or is there any harm in running both simultaneously?
I have been running both Win7 firewall and AIS for almost a year. I was told that it was designed to run with Win7 and isn’t a problem. Certainly no problems on this end…most firewalls don’t run well together…RR
Hi cwesley.
Normally that would be a good best practice to follow, (turn Windows Firewall off) but Avast! AIS firewall is designed to complement the Windows Firewall.
As far as my limited knowledge allows, Avast! is the only one that allows these to work together and seamlessly, as well.
So, you should not have any problems with this configuration.
Add to that, the protection is better with Avast! AIS and Windows Firewall together than WF alone…
Does the W7 firewall really added any protection? What does it add to the AIS firewall? If nothing that can be identified, then why not disable the Window firewall?
Thanks,
Jerry
I think it is something to do with the AIS firewall not supporting ipv6
As far as I know at this time that is correct
Hi cwesley et al.,
IPv6 may be a valid argument, but I doubt if your Internet provider already enables this on your connection.
Windows Firewall does a fine job on inbound connections. AIS firewall supplements this (maybe supplants on a case-by-case base, I don’t know): you can define “friend” IP’s and allow/disallow outbound and inbound connections depending on IP (friend or non-friend), application and port. I bet most of you didn’t bother actually setting this up, neither did I. This is similar to trusted/non-trusted zones in Internet Explorer, but more finegrained and applicable to more than just your browser.
No harm is done running both Windows and AIS firewall simultaneously. I don’t remember setting any AIS rule manually, and it at least does provide a measure of outbound protection, for what it’s worth (there are voices claiming that outbound protection is not very useful, since the baddy already resides on your pc). You gain a more finegrained control over incoming and outgoing connections; this may be desirable in some cases.
When you uninstall an application, its AIS firewall rules seem unaffected. You may want to clean these up every once and a while.
Best regards,
Thanks for the input. I had disabled the W 7 firewall with Avast IS. I think I will enable it based upon these comments.
Jerry
More protection, the better. IPv6 support is important.
Thank each of you for your input. It has been very helpful. 