Disabling windows XP firewall.

I installed avast free home edition today & I’m wondering if it’s necessary to disable the XP firewall.
Regards,
M

avast isn’t a firewall so no there is no need to disable the windows XP firewall. In fact I would go further and say you need better firewall protection.

Whilst the windows XP firewall is usually good at keeping your ports stealthed (hidden) it provides no outbound protection and you should consider a third party firewall.

Any malware that manages to get past your defences will have free reign to connect to the internet to either download more of the same, pass your personal data (sensitive or otherwise, user names, passwords, keylogger retrieved data, etc.) or open a backdoor to your computer, so outbound protection is essential.

No, Avast doesn’t have a firewall (Yet) so leave your firewall on.

(Sorry David, We must have posted at the same time.)

Slightly off topic, but closely related … when and if you do decide to go to a third-party firewall (I use the PC Tools one myself), most of those will automatically disable the Win firewall as part of the installation process, so there’s no conflict.