hi all,
I got no additional firewall to the windows xp one on my system and was wonderin, if that's a mistake

I have no idea how good the win firewall is considered to be or if it's total crap

anybody have any info on this? should I install an additional firewall? if so, which one? do they work alongside each other at all or does the windows one have to be turned off?

lotsa questions, sorry

The Windows XP Firewall, in conjunction with DEP (even software DEP) is sufficient for the prevention of worm attacks.

This Software Firewall is an incoming blocker only, which means it does not filter outgoing data. This is not a problem unless your system is already infected with a worm or Trojan. As long as you maintain a good anti-virus scanner such as Norton Antivirus or Trend Micro PC Cillin, you should be fine.

Personal Firewalls that are active in both directions are generally bloated and obtuse; unforgiving of the average user if they mistake, intrusive and insult of the advanced user. As you may be able to detect, I have no love for them :P

Generally, I'd always say one program of a kind is always enough.
But the question is, whether you're happy with the windows firewall. Like, do you find it easy enough to configure or do you have some sort of problem with it?
Personally, I've been playing around with various stuff, since I don't find the win firewall all that easy to handle. I had zonealarm first and now switched to norton personal firewall because it was already installed on a puter that I recently bought.

Both are superior to the win firewall, I'd say where handling is concerned.
The Norton Personal Firewall has the additional plus of learning from your online habits and thus configuring itself kinda, so it's very low maintenance and almost no manual config is necessary at all. I really liked that part about it. I'm not sure if it's included in the older versions, my version is the 06 one.

Norton Personal Firewall is low maintenance, until the unsuspecting user clicks the wrong button - then they're locked out of the internet all of a sudden, and a technician needs to fix it. No, this is not me being overly critical; it's something I've seen time and time again.

One of the big problems with bloated applications like Norton Personal Firewall, is they tend to give a user the illusion of impenetrability. This leads to a greater virus infection rate than users who have simpler solutions. I've seen countless systems with 5 kinds of anti-spyware protected, 2 anti-virus software suites and a smattering of firewalls, entertaining the biggest general malware infections I've ever seen.

The unfortunate matter is, the most money is to be made in human greed and human paranoia, in that order. Firewalls developers are frequently more motivated by exploiting the latter, to the detriment of good software.

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Hi,
Windows XP has a built in firewall which protecting your computer from hackers, but it is not recommended that you use it for a long time, maybe you may use some free firewalls out there on the internet, well for me, the best firewall is the McAfee Personal Firewall plus+, which alerts you when an attack hits you.
But, there is so many anti-hackers which you can download for free.
I don't know the website url of this free firewalls, but i will give to you their names, just google it!!! ZoneAlarm Free Firewall, Sunbelt Kerio Fire, and Sygate Firewall.

I would council against taking the above post with any degree of seriousness.