A light free firewall that is light on resources?

Hi,
I have recently installed zonealarm on a Win XP machine. It slowed the machine to a crawl: boot times are geological, sometimes I feel the mouse is nearly non-responding. Is this one of the reason ZA firewall does not appear between the security software suggested in this forum?
I also had to disable logging since it was using hundreds of MB to store its logs...

I have two questions:

1) Will I have problems in uninstalling it and cleaning my system? Do I need special tools, like for earlier versions of NIS?

2) What is a light (free, I'm a cheapskate but it's not my fault, it's genetics ) firewall that won't take up many resources, won't make my PC a slug and allow for checking outbound traffic ("Application <name you have not even installed> is trying to access the Internet. Allow or DENY?")

(I'd rather not use a suite since I'm feeling comfortable with Avira's AV).

Is PC Tools Firewall lighter than ZA?

Thanks for any hint.

 

Windows Firewall.

I'm serious.

Zone Alarm was ok at one point, but got bad with later versions and on one occasion actually managed to mess up my OS.

These days I only use Microsoft Security Essentials in conjucture with Windows Firewall which is just as simple, VERY light, effective and free.
I have no problems whatsoever, and my system is as fast as ever.

Do yourself a favour and don't mess around with extra firewalls since it's completely unnecessary.
Any hacker who wants to enter your system would be able to bypass a software based firewall easily.
For best protection, hardware based firewall (the one in the ADSL router) is the one that counts.

 

Here's another option: http://www.pctools.com/firewall/.

Cheers...

 

AFAIK it does not allow outbound traffic control [1].
Makes me wonder why.

Besides, my brain is too old to allow for radical modifications of the synaptic circuitry. I will never be able to associate the word "Microsoft" with the word "secure" unless there is a negation of some sort in between the two.

[1] A software I installed yesterday (certified spyware and adware free by this and that company) was caught by ZA while trying to reach a website. It was probably to transmit innocent statistics about usage, or just to check for updates, but it did not ask permission to do so, and I do NOT tolerate this behavior. Installation is before you could possibly uncheck the options to reach the Internet.

Yep, this is the one I was focusing on. (Read about it in the list on top of the forum).
Before installing it and cluttering even more my system I wanted to know if it is not a resource hog.

Thanks for your answer.

 

When I installed it, it seemed a good bit lighter than Comodo Firewall Pro. I haven't used Zone Alarm much though, so I'm not sure on that one.

 

Ive used Comodo in the past and liked it.

 

outpost free , use it on my netbooks with no trouble . tried pc tools , good but had some problems .

 

COMODO Firewall is probably your best bet. PCTools Firewal, is very light on resources, but i cant recommend it as i experienced a lot of slow downs (with internet speeds) when i was testing it recently. But, thats just a personal choice.

If you need a firewall for just Outbound control, then also try W7/Vista Firewall Control. It just runs alongside Windows firewall, and when an app tries to connect outside, it alerts you. Very simple program, and i'd highly recommend it if you need just outbound control for windows firewall.

Cheers.

 

I've tried Comodo as well, and it seems solid and I liked it alright, but I definitely don't use all the features, and hate all the *files waiting for my review* jazz. Oh, and it had weird crashing issues with VLC Media player.

I'd probably still use it (and do when I boot Windows on the desktop), except I'm usually running Linux.

 

yes it does you have to set it manually.
Go to Control Panel, Firewall, Advance setting, then properties look for default ruleset if you set it to block outgoing by default you have to add an exception to every network program you want to have access to.