Which one should I allow to be on, and which one should be turned off in your opinion?

 

get a hardware firewall

 

unless you're directly connected to the net (i.e. no NAT router) all you need is the windows firewall and some good spyware/av stuff.

Symantec's firewall is a joke anyway.

 

Symantec=poison.

 

not even close to necessary for a home PC behind a NAT router.

 

This is work and we have a Watchguard firewall as our gateway to the internet.

 

Then all you need is the windows firewall. Why isn't someone in IT at your work setting this up for you?

 

In a corporate network Symantec client firewall will probably lead to nightmare upon nightmare of having to create exceptions for applications, network protocols, etc...

 

I am the IT guy. I work on a small insurance agency so I am IT!!! My background is programming though but I recently completed an upgrade from our Windows SBS 2000 to 2003. At the same time I upgraded our Symantec Client Security software from 2.0 to 3.1. Lo and behold, the 3.1 version has a firewall piece which we didn't have with 2.0. That's why I was asking.

 

just keep in mind that by default the windows firewall drops icmp (pings), and a bunch of other stuff so if you do any remote software installations or vulnerability assessments it might block you unless you open some stuff up (xp sp2 firewall only).

 

I hear you. I have a few remote offices and I use VNC to control those desktops.

 

I have Symantec latest version at .401 I think it works pretty good.

 

Zeroday for the win..... Windows Firewall is fine and free....

 

zonealarm

 

 

I use zonealarm for my home pc, just because I have more control over what I want going in and out of my pc. With the windows firewall I have a hard time with network connectivity.

 

:gospel:

 

huh ??? what you not coming back ?