DavidR
4
Well the ‘default’ firewall when you get your PC is generally the windows firewall and that should be on by default unless you have installed a 3rd party firewall.
You don’t say what your OS is, if windows 7 then earlier versions of PCTools firewall ‘may’ have had a problem, but the latest version should be OK. I don’t have a lot of personal experience with different firewalls as I have had Agnitum’s Outpost Firewall Pro (paid option) for a great many years.
Many forum users are using these:
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PCTools Firewall Plus. This is a relatively user friendly firewall, however, for a time there were problems with this firewall and avast 6.x auto updates (blocked) and there didn’t seem to be a way to resolve this other than to uninstall the firewall. There has been a new version of PCTools Firewall Plus released, but I don’t know if that resolved this issue as I don’t use it.
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Online Armor for the most parts fine for most users.
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PrivateFirewall, http://www.privacyware.com/personal_firewall.html
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Outpost Free Suite 7, which should still provide good protection, http://free.agnitum.com/. Whilst this is a suite, when you install it, it detects avast and asks if you have it installed, answering Yes will mean it doesn’t install the antivirus, anti-spyware and web control modules to maintain compatibility.
You didn’t answer the question about McAfee directly, but given your answer about having McAfee anti-virus, if it were the suite version with firewall and AV (this could have a direct impact on other firewalls) ?