Southern York County Life

You might want to checkout

http://www.kerio.com/kpf_home.html

It is free for the home user.  It has the same feature set as the "for pay" Zonealarm Pro.
The product is being transferred to SunBelt Software at the end of the year.

Support can be found in the Broadbandreports.com
Tiny/Kerio Forum

Very easy Interface to use and has advanced rule definitions as well.

Zort2001 (I have no financial interest in any of these companies).

It doesn’t appear to be free anymore. There is a free trial period, but after that, you have to purchase it.

I found this one called Filseclab. It had good reviews. Since I am not an internet guru, I would appreciate anyone’s opinion on this firewall. It looks nice, installs easily and seems to do the job. I had one of those sites do a port inspection and the results were that it was a sound set-up.

http://www.download.com/Filseclab-Personal-Firewall-Professional-Edition/3000-10435_4-10421598.html?tag=lst-0-9

Zone alarm has always been a popular free firewall. http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,7228,RSS,RSS,00.asp There are a couple other nice free programs at that link also. In addition, free anti-virus: http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1 and free anti-spyware: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

Thanks, I’ll check the links out. I read a couple of reviews that the free version of Zone Alarm caused some problems. I guess it din’t play well with some people’s set up. So far, the Filseclab is working ok. Of course, you never know how good it is until it’s too late.

I’ve been using Zone Alarm with mixed results.  I like the way it works in general terms, but once in awhile it seems to affect Internet access, especially after my notebook computer has been in sleep mode.  At least I assume the cuprit is Zone Alarms since shutting it down restores all Internet access (I don’t get any messages other than timeouts).  It’s that problem that keeps me from even looking at the pro version.

Quite some time back I used the Kerio firewall, but can’t remember why I switched.  In any case, I’m sure it’s changed since then.  I’m not familiar with Filseclab.  Perhaps I’ll take a look at it.

Thanks Dan, if you get a chance to check out that firewall, I would appreciate it. So far, it has seemed to work well for me, but I am by no means able to properly determine how well it works.
The problems you described having with zone alarm seem to have been experienced by alot of others. That and some more reported problems with that one caused me to by pass it also.
The reason I am looking for a free firewall was that my trial period of Norton’s that came with my PC is up and I am a cheap skate.
The AVG virus program recommended here seems to be working fine for me too. Thanks again!

Kerio is free.  Some features turn off after the trial period is over.
However, the Firewall portion continues to run.  Zonealarm works the
same way (Free version and then Pro Version)

Kerio was acquired by Sunbelt-Software.  They now have it at promotional
pricing (around $14) if you want the additional features.

Kerio - Firewall (Free)
AVG - Antivirus (Free)
Spybot - Antispyware Cleanup (Free)
Spyware Blaster - Prevents Spyware Infection (Free)

That’s what I found when I looked at Kerio, that it really wasn’t free. Some of the functions went away. It may be worth a look though.
Thanks for all the input.