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General discussion

XP firewall

by msoucy Nov 25, 2003 12:34PM PST

I am planning on upgrading my system soon to Windows XP Home edition. A friend of mine told me that XP has it's own built in firewall program. Which is better the firewall that's a part of XP or a 3rd party firewall like Norton Firewall?

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2 Posts

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Re:XP firewall

by David Chan Nov 25, 2003 8:44PM PST

XP's firewall is rather basic as it only stops incoming and doesn't stop outgoing.

So if you have a worm that sends mass emailing from your PC it won't block this.

But it's free and provides some protection.

Third party firewalls like Norton or ZoneAlarm will certainly do a better job but you'll have to learn how to set them properly especially if your PC is part of a network.

BTW, if you change your OS make sure you back up all your files and it is highly recommended to do a clean install of XP.

Before you start go to this site to do an online scan to see if your PC is compatible with XP.
If any software or hardware are noted to be incompatible make sure you remove them before you install XP.

XP Readiness Test

Clean Install XP

Windows XP Installation

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Concur with David...

by glenn30 Nov 25, 2003 10:35PM PST

And also consider XP's firewall as basis and offering no outgoing protection. For me I have found none better that ZoneAlarm Free version.

FWIW

Glenn

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