Nameless Voice on 11/6/2010 at 19:17

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I'm looking for a some good firewall software for Windows 7.

I used to use Kerio Personal Firewall in XP, and I liked it a lot - simple popup confirmations with clear Permit / Deny and the ability to create advanced rules right there in the popup, and it didn't automatically steal focus so that you'd accidentally pick something at random if you were typing when a prompt appeared.
The problem is that Kerio has been discontinued (it was actually bought by Sunbelt, became Sunbelt Personal Firewall, and was then promptly discontinued) and there's no Windows 7 x64 version.

The built-in Windows 7 firewall doesn't have enough flexibility for me - I want proper prompts and no program getting access to the Internet without my having approved of it.


I first tried Comodo firewall, which had a truly awful and confusing interface, but was eventually forced to uninstall it as it regularly caused my whole computer to lock up. Turning off its Defence+ helped a bit (it no longer locked up every time I started a game), but it would still randomly lock up the whole PC once or twice a week - unacceptable.

I'm currently using ZoneAlarm, but it's driving me crazy with random popup alerts about programs that do not even use the Internet, trying to access my router or use the special IPv6 reserved address. These random and nonsensical alerts love to pop up while I'm in the middle of a game, and Left 4 Dead 2 suddenly minimizing in the middle of a firefight and taking a good 15-20 seconds to alt-tab back into it is not fun.
(I'm fairly sure it's not a virus, plus my searching has found reports of people having the exact same issue on other forums, such as this thread (http://forums.zonealarm.com/showthread.php?t=68290) here which exactly describes my problem.)

Can anyone suggest a good firewall program which works in Windows 7 x64, preferably free and with an interface like Kerio's?