Hi, since yesterday i havent been able to connect to msn messenger, i went into the Connection trobleshooter on messenger, and it said that my gateway appears to be offline, when i dont understand this as it music be online, i am connected to the internet now, just msn thinks my default gateway is offline, i dont have a firewall running at the moment. Also Windows Firewall seems to be on, no option to turn it off tho :\ *EDIT** Ah it was only sygate personal firewall causing problems, i uninstalled it now, any other decent firewalls out there? for free?
ZoneAlarm is ok once you get it configured, the only problem is I think it counts as bloatware. It's the only software firewall I've ever tried, and now I don't use one, just a hardware firewall (even though it doesn't stop outbound access).
Dunno any free ones but Ive found mcaffe to be pretty good. The worst thing about it is that security centre thing. Its worth disabling all features of it except the firewall in msconfig.
Windows Firewall - But not really . I did try Norton Internet Security once, but I found it very annoying, and it slowed down my computer significantly. This can be done in the Windows security center I believe. I'm not on XP now, but have a look around. Also, open control panel and open windows firewall (on the classic view). I think there's an option to turn it off there.
