Firewalls

I have the paid for version of Avast. If I access Security via the Control Panel, I get the message that both Windows Firewall and Avast Internet Security are ‘on’. Does this mean that I have 2 firewalls installed or is Avast simply monitoring things in the background?

yes you have 2 installed…windows firewall is part of the OS…you can turn it off when you have avast firewall

Whilst you can turn the windows firewall off, the AIS firewall should be compatible even with it on.

thanks guys and sorry for the delayed reply.

Guys, correct me if I’m wrong, but I always thought that

[]in Win7, the Win FW may be turned off
[
]in WinXP and Vista, the Win FW should be left enabled[/li]

due to the fact, that some important part for the AIS is turned off in Vista / XP when disabling the Win FW (in Win 7 this behaviour has changed).
Don’t no for sure, was something about IPSEC I think…

So, if the OT is running Vista as is stated in the sig, the recommendation would be: leave Win FW enabled.

Am I wrong?

yepp, think you are correct there Zyndstoff…
I think it was Logos that found all the info about this and postet it somwhere

anyway i also turn it off on XP…only running one FW :wink:

Thanks, Pondus, for your confirmation.

Helps me to give correct advice in my posts. :smiley:

I can’t find the post by Vlk (I think it was) where something like that was said, but I don’t believe there was an OS differentiation.

PMed for clarification…
I’ll share the answer as it comes in.

Zyndstoff

Thanks.

Avast AIS firewall is fully capable to protect you with one exception: It does not support Ipv6.
So if you are running over ipv6 and want to have control over ipv6 you need windows FW. With AIS you can just allow/block ipv6 as a whole.
As the technologies used for AIS Fw and Windows FW are different, there are no compatibility problems running both of them together. This is true for all versions of Windows including Windows XP.


Having WinFW on [b]does not harm anything[/b] as there are [b]no compatibility issues[/b].

Thanks for the clarification.

I’ll throw my understanding of the firewall situation, with hopes someone will improve it. :slight_smile:
In spite of the noninterference, you need to be aware that the Windows firewall is out there and active, has its own set of rules, and will apply them before Avast! firewall gets a chance to apply theirs-kind of like the firewall you might have in your router. For W7 the main rules to be aware of are:

Block all inbound connections that do not match a rule
Allow all outbound connections that do not match a rule

You can see all this in W7 by going to Control Panel/Windows Firewall/Advanced Settings and then selecting the inbound or outbound rules. The attachment shows my inbound rules, which were all made by default. Don’t really understand why a few applications were selected by default and most were not, but suspect they needed the rule and I allowed it somewhere along the way.
Windows Firewall should give you a message if it blocks anything, so in the absence of such a message WFW is really doing nothing. Just if you get a message, you need to go make a rule. :slight_smile: And you get a little different set of active rules when you select “Public” vs “Work” or “Home” profile.