Sunbelt Firewall

I installed Sunbelt Firewall, as I had felt the Windows Vista one was not adequate enough. When I tried to access facebook.com with the firewall enabled, it would load but not display anything. This is technically a three part question, if I may?

1). Is the Windows Vista Firewall enough, Do I need Sunbelt?
2). Turning on Sunbelt Firewall disables Facebook, do they conflict?
3). Would another program be more efficient?

Matt

One thing I am noticing with Sunbelt and Avast running is browsing seems slow. I ran a boot scan and everything was clean which is why I ask in the above post.

  1. Vista Firewall is sufficient for most, but it depends on what you use your machine for. If you do a search on the forum, you will see that there are several third-party firewalls that works best with avast without conflicts. I cannot speak for sunbelt since I have never used them, but I have read about them on wilders forum.

My questions to you are:
a) Did you have any other third-party FW on your machine prior to this?
b) Did you make both sunbelt and avast as trusted exclusions?
c) Did you reboot after the installation of the FW?
d) Is anything being blocked by your FW that pertains to avast?

  1. I can’t answer this question. Sorry. Perhaps someone else can.

  2. See my response in #1 in doing a search for perhaps a more compatible FW with avast (e.g. but not limited to: online armor (for beginners and advanced), PCTools FirewallPlus (for beginners and advanced), outpost (for beginners and advanced), comodoFW (for intermed. to advanced).

Thanks for the reply, Speedy:)

a). Yes, I had Online Armor Free as a suggestion from Wilders
b). I did not, how can I do this?
c). Yes twice to three times (even started in safe mode)
d). I am not sure, how can I check?

Incidentally, after a full scan was completed and found zero threats, I booted out of safe mode and found Facebook to be working.

To made trusted exclusions with OA and avast:

OA: Go to Main Menu > Options > Exclusions > click on Add > a pop up window will come up for you to select the location of where to find your program/software > DOUBLE click on C/drive > DOUBLE click on Program Files > click on awil software…done.

avast: Go to avast GUI > Settings (upper right corner) > Exclusions (left pane) > click Add > click Browse > a pop up window will come up for you to select the location of where to find your program/software > DOUBLE click on C/drive > DOUBLE click on Program Files > click on the BOX next to the name of the software you want to exclude (tall emu)…done. Repeat this process for any other security software you have.

Make sure when you uninstall a security software like an AV or FW that you remove it per the instruction of the vendor, which may include going into Safe Mode to check for remnants. OA uninstalls cleanly, but if you have been making a lot of changes, there are instructions on their forum for doing a simple search in Safe Mode to make sure all is clean. Any remnants of any security software can cause a conflict with another.

Now that your facebook problem is resolved, try making your trusted exclusions and see if this resolves your other problem. If it doesn’t, can you see if your FW is blocking any traffic needed by avast? Or my other thought since not many signatures here represent sunbelt, I would try a different FW as mentioned above.

May I ask how you use your FW (beginner, intermediate, advanced)? In other words, do you like to see a lot of settings and play around with stuff that you can control or do you just want it to work and do it’s thing behind the scene?

Thanks SafeSurf:)

I use my firewall to just have it working. I had felt and read the vista one was not that strong/could use one free for a little extra protection.

Another suggestion over at Wilders (I can understand how saying other forum names could be a bad thing since we’re trying to promote Avast! and their software) but I have also installed Sandboxie which I heard excellent things about.
Matt

sportsfan7700,

just to let you know, i use Sunbelt Personal Firewall 4 and Avast 5 (but on XP) and can successfully access Facebook - so there is hope!

Penfold

@ sportsfan7700,

Have you made your AV and FW trusted exclusions yet and did this resolve your problem?

If not, are you seeing anything in your FW logs to indicate that avast is being blocked by the FW?

When you had OA or used the vista FW, did you have this problem of slow surfing? Is the slow surfing in just one browser or others? Which ones?

BTW, it might help to abbreviate or spell names differently so when others google, your thread with your logo/name isn’t pulled up and read by millions. :o

Please include prior to making your next post your signature. Go to Profile (top of page) > Forum Profile Information (enter your information about your system and security information) > Save. This way people trying to help you have information about your system so it will be quicker to respond. Thanks.

Hey Safe,

I’ll have to get back to you. I can’t seem to access anything in my vista partition because I can’t seem to log in (can’t imput my password, it just refuses to type letters or numbers.) I do have a question though. Could it be possible that on one partition (Vista) my keyboard is completely kaput, while my linux partition is fully typing just as I please? This was all after a scan, which found nothing and vista booted up normally without any blue screens or errors.

I will try and get a new keyboard tomorrow and report back. Matt

I hope what is at the bottom can suffice until I can buy a new keyboard, safe. Let me know if you need anything further.

I was able to make my AV and FW trusted exclusions before my keyboard went kaput.
your AV and FW trusted exclusions

When you had OA or used the vista FW, did you have this problem of slow surfing? Is the slow surfing in just one browser or others? Which ones?: I’ll have to get back to you on that, sorry. I cannot remember after my keyboard went south although if I remember this, it was only with sunbelt.

I have attempted more then once to hide that info by unchecking that box. Seems it’s not working.

I saw your other thread so I’m aware of your other problem, so we won’t discuss it here, but I do understand that it is a priority for you to get that fixed.

Re: OA and avast and slow surfing, only a very few have had issues but only with XP’s (not Vista), and the solution was to install OA first, then avast and that resolved the problem…and remember to make OA Trust All (i.e. trusting avast and all it’s components) so that there will be no conflicts. Another key with OA is that you NEED to reboot TWICE after installation and uninstallation (to install/uninstall registries and drivers); this actually is true with a lot of software but they only tell you to boot once. But in OA, you will actually see the change of the GUI after the second boot. With the free version, I would suggestion you do a manual update after installation and then set your settings for as frequent as the software allows.

Thank you for updating your signature, and when you have your other problems resolved, just respond back to this thread. Thanks.

Hi all,

Just now reinstalling Vista with a new keyboard and am updating & putting everything back before my crash.

Have an emergency in the next few weeks so if I am not here I will respond in due course. Matt