Ah, well, no argument there. I'm just comparing ZA's software firewall effectivness to the software firewall provided by SP2. Apples and oranges when yer talking about hardware firewalls and I agree with ya.

It's still on the MS site's own list of programs that SP2 breaks, as of 2 days ago.

I run Xp on all my pc's and always run the updates and have yet to have a problem :)

Far be it for me to tell you how to work, but there is a complete work around to the issues of pinnacle version 9 (and make sure you have 9.1 or higher):

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=884130 lists the problem.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=875351 has the work around. Basically, the way pinnacle tries to pass information around is the same way that many viruses work. So that path is blocked unless you specifically disable certain things. If you disable, things are apparently fixed.

If you paid pinnacle for a working product, you should be on their case for not keeping up with patches... SP2 has been out for a while, this isn't a "new this week" issue.

As for software firewalls, well, like I said, they are ALL pointless. I leave microsoft's running because it is there, but I have neutered it down almost entirely. Nice to know when programs want to talk outside, I guess. But the hardware firewall stops the most significant types of attacks, port scans and such.

Alex

so it would be good to update and get the sp2? i am so afraid i fuck up my computer...maybe i will try it today, btw if you put up the sp2 and it does fucked up can i remove it again ?

I haven't encounter the problems that everyone else has had with SP2, the problem I've encountered each time I install it is if I want to do private shows I'm not able to broadcast out.....ggrrrrrr

I just gave up trying to work with it, lost 2-3 days of doing shows when I was doing them regularly. :(

lassiter - you might also want to check out some of the problems people have had when trying to upgrade to SP2 with ZA running - it tends to cause problems and was a major headache for my son-in-law, but after removing ZA, my SP2 upgrade a few months ago was flawless.
I am running very similar to Alex and have had a few programs like Adwatch and SpySweep running in the background - they occasionally find something on a webpage but thats about it

Most of you know I am an MCSE (microshit engineer) from way back..also novell and cisco, etc..
If you plan on continuing to use Windows XP, even tho it is not the best operating system in the world, there will come a day when you will not be able to update and get the patches without it. Period. If I am not mistaken, Tuesday is the day.
You need to be sure all of your other software is up to date (you should anyway) and stable before you do.

I run za and have version security suite 5.5.062.011, which is the most STABLE of the new security suite versions. I have spysweeper but stuck with Version 3.2.0 (Build 148) because it is the least intrusive and most stable one, I use Norton system works 2004 because it is the most stable one for my system. Do you see a pattern?

Pick your accompanying software carefully. I know we should be able to use any damn thing we want but sometimes, with certain things, one must investigate and possibly upgrade for the health of the system.
Software companies are slowly making their products SP2 compatible so look out for upgrades on items you use.

And set scans daily and weekly to keep you secure even tho you are behind a nat or hardware firewall just because. You need a trojan scanner, spyware scanner and antivirus scanner to be on the neurotic safe side.
There have been a few minor firefox exploits and a few minor mac exploits in the past few months so beware, the hackers and idiots who do this are getting smarter by the minute.

Hanging out on exploit irc channels will really open your eyes but be careful.

|mml|

No need for this update here.

What is this thing called a virus?
|couch|

hehe

Been playing with a small ibook for the past few months..pretty kewl stuff

Well i did it a year ago.. and it blocked all my ports. i was off the net for a week before i could get it repaired. Had to totally wipe it all out and start over.

i'm about due for a new machine anyway.. so I'd rather not take any chances again, especially since my in-house tech has been divorced.
:(

OK, dumb PC question. We do this on Macs in case an update goes bad.

Can't you just mirror the drive before doing an update and if things go bad just restore the drive from the mirror?

Mac people use Carbon Copy Cloner, I thought Ghost did this on the PC side of things.

I've been using 98 since '99 (I'm a slow starter). I've never had to do a forced re-install or had destruction of the OS. But this could be due to the fact that I have active-x disabled all the time, and j/script on prompt, and it's not very often that I allow it. I even went as far as making my own index page for a board that converted to a j/script index. I also do deep deletions of "temporary internet files" and I have freed off up to a gig on some machines after the files had been deleted in IE. I haven't allowed ICQ onto an important computer either since AOL bought it. That's another virus highway.

I've got SuSe here, and Linux will be my next OS, There's no way that I'm going to be installing Dickhorn. (well I might have a test rig just to see how my sites display to the surfing sheep).

I'm running XP SP2 with no problems. But, it wasnt a smooth transition.

Maybe my experience will help someone.

I was running 98 and did the "upgrade". This was on a Microstar 6167 mb with 256meg of ram. The result was horrible. I reloaded win98. Shortly after that, I loaded Win2000. I took an immediate dislike to it. The worst thing was the way it handles video with two monitors. It works, but not like I wanted it to. 3 days later, back to win98.

Then a MCSE aquintance told me not to do the "upgrade" to XP. Instead, do a clean install. That made all the difference. XP ran very smoothly for about 4 months. Then it wouldnt boot. After about 6 hours of not being able to figure out why, I reloaded win98. Golly, the difference was immediate. XP was far better than 98. The most noticeable difference was the speed of the caches "virtual memory". My machine seemed to slow down about 30% with 98.

After getting a couple of tips from my MCSE friend, I reload XP. Again, everything ran smooth. I loaded Sp1, again everything was smooth. However, Sp2 did not like my Microstar 6167 mb. My MCSE friend told me that Sp2 is very picky about drivers. Btw, the install of Sp2 crashed the machine and I had to reinstall XP. That was annoying.

Somebody asked if you could recover or "uninstall" Sp2 if the install failed. Microsoft may have a way to do it, but it wasnt possible for me.

Then I made a trade for a newer computer. Sp2 loaded loaded just fine and I havent had any trouble with it. This machine is a AMD 1200, and with XP Sp2 its blazing fast.

Edit:
The new machine only had 128meg, XP was dead slow. I upgraded to 256meg, XP then became blazing fast.

I havent run XP Home, I hear it sucks, I have XP Pro and I have been warned never to use XP Home. In my mind, XP is what 95 should have been. I want to move to freeBSD, but the thread a couple of weeks ago about Wine has me rethinking it.

Cleo, XP has what it calls, "Restore Points", I still dont have a handle on that. Your suppose to got back to previous configuration, but I havnt used it. Also all Windows, 95-XP, has an option to save/backup the Registry. Its recommended that you back the Registry up before adding any new software, but nobody does it. Ghosting the drive is possible, but it doesnt come with Windows and I would bet that 98% of the average users have no clue what that is. Besides, if it isnt for free they wouldnt use it anyway.

I recently discovered in IE6 with Sp2 there is a new option under Tools called "Manage add-ons". You can disable any unwanted shit that loaded without your knowedlge, very cool feature.

For those running 98, the time is drawing near for Microsoft to stop supporting it. They were going to stop last year, but to many new machines are still being sold in Asia loaded with 98. I "think" they said about another year or year and half then they would stop. That was last year. Windows NT is getting close to time also.

Suggestion, upgrade to XP and ride it out. Check deja for work arounds. Cams not working? My first guess is its a port problem, not an OS problem. Something somewhere had a closed port. Remember to check for closed UDP ports. Also, firewalls work both coming and going.

my 2 cents


-

Ditto.
Since I switched to FF I haven't been stumbled by a single virus. I've had a firewall running for as long as I've been on broadband. Crazy not to.

i wouldnt recommend anyone applying a operating system upgrade over any older ms poop products cuase there is allways problems that happen.

fresh install is the best way to go with any ms products.

the back up options in xp are usefull however when a virus starts a rampage all over the computer it will infect those backed up files so a format is still the best path to take and why does norton antivirus 2002 have defualt scanning options to not scan ms backup folders? hmmmmm interesting indeed.

The 98 to XP story is funny - microsoft always tries to sell you on upgrades, but the reality is that OS and other programs leave tons of junk around the place, and an upgrade is often less than effective because of those little issues... a wrong dll, a corrupted file, a 98 only driver... whatever.

Kat, sounds like you got caught behind a firewall. Microsoft installs one pretty much "like that" with sp2 now, so you may have to manually re-open the port that your cam software is using. I am sure the manufacture would have info on their website, as I am sure you are not the only one.

You could also go and disable the firewall completely.

XP home - now there is a winning product! A dumb, neutered, full frontal lobotomy version of an OS that needs all it's brains to survive. A bad idea, bad choice, delete and install XP pro or just don't bother using the machine. A waste of space.

Finally, as for the Microstar 6167 mb, well, running AMD is always a crap shoot. You will often require special driver, and special OS patches to match up to the processor. Some of the AMD motherboards were also less than compliant at times, so there can be issues. This is a 6 year old mb design as well, maybe even 7 or 8, so you really are pushing it (their last driver update at msi for it is dated 1999). Those were the bad old days for compatiblity issues amd to intel / microslop.

Alex

I haven't required any support from Microsoft ever. I notice that they had to buy another company to try to prevent their current OS from being infected/corrupted, so I suspect they aren't too well informed about the activities of their in-house coders. :)

98 re-calibrates it's cache fairly frequently unless you tell it not to. Just go into virtual memory and set it to a fixed size.

HS - a few things about Norton make you suspect that they are not too stessed about people getting infected - it probably means they can sell them a bit more stuff or an upgrade.

What feature(s) missing from XP Home vs. XP Pro are there that you can't live without?

I not a big fan of Microsoft products, but I can remember the misery of supporting NT 3.5 and 4.0, and XP Home seems to be a fairly decent desktop OS compared to where Windows was at 9 years ago. After installing Cygwin and a few other tweaks my Presario Laptop with XP Home is almost the Powerbook that I really wanted, but at 1/3 the cost.

yea amd shouldnt have any business making mother boards theres allways some patch for them i do like there processor for the ability to live has long has they do. combined with asus mother boards i havnt had any trouble with that combination however i would very much like to throw away via chipset based mother boards cuase they have conflics with anything a month newer then the actual chipset.

You're a certified computer engineer, but yet you're using ZA?

There are a few other firewalls that outperform ZA-- And offer more advanced controls. ;)

Anyways, there's probably a reason why you're still using ZA... Either that, or I'm just too obsessed about my incoming and outgoing traffic.

airdick, XP home is just not as robust, there are things in the way it looks at networking, system control, etc that are just not the same as XP pro, and it leads to "issues". My sister is a horribly bad computer person, shares a system with 2 kids a hubby that is even worse. They had XP home, I was up there every other week fixing something, patching whatnot. reformated the system completely, put on xp pro, and all of those issues just went away.

Now if I could just get them to stop downloading spyware, we would have something.

Alex

I installed W2k3 Enterprise the other day. When it gets done, it asks you if you want to connect to the mothership to download updates.

The first box that pops up says: windowsupdate.microsoft.com is not a trusted site. You should only allow sites that you trust to be moved into this zone. It did this about 4 times with different .microsoft.com hostnames associated with the upgrade.

Sort of makes you feel all warm inside when even Microsoft doesn't trust Microsoft sites. :)

I had actually disabled the firewall. For the private show it uses flash & requires no download. Just hook up your cam & go.

I'm not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to this. So would manually re-opening my port apply? And if so, how would I do that?

Yes you can use ghost, I use it all the time. But in the case of windows 2K or Xp, because the os is proprietary, if you have say replaced the chip or mobo or other assorted itmes, it may be a but hairy and will probably ask you to reregister. Win2k had a replicator called sysrep that replicated for you too because of this problem.
In case of trouble, I always just have my os on it's own hard drive and install all programs on another so I can see what I had, what I still want, etc. I also always try to keep a mirrored hard drive on hand at all times in a removable case just for problems

Well, maybe. A firewall that sets all ports to emulate stealth mode, like ZA, certainly offers protection from all the script kiddies that are just auto-pinging ports within certain IP ranges looking for an open port. ZA always shows my ports as non-existent, and there's plenty of wide-open unprotected machines for the kids to hack.

Sure, it probably wouldn't stop a knowledgable person who specifically wished to do me harm, but it's effective against virtually all of the idjits that are probing for open ports.