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03. Feb 2012, 10:18 AM
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#11 (permalink) |
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Site Manager
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: South American Banana Republic, third bunch from the left
Posts: 9,250
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Since XP, trying to find just a simple firewall to control program connections has been a nightmare. Almost all of the freeware third party apps for Windows 7 assume users have no brain at all and only offer a simplified function if you start switching things off. Even so, browsing the various forums reads like a script for a horror movie. It seems like these things are only trouble free if installed into a pristine system that sees little executable traffic in and out. In other words, don't use your computer much with one installed and you'll be fine.
There's nothing wrong with the built in seven firewall of course, in fact it 's greatly improved over the XP version and more than adequate for everyday needs. The problems begin when you try to see what it's doing and/or want to change how. A couple of third party apps came along, with almost identical names, in an attempt to redress this balance, but their obvious intent is to sell the upgraded versions and neither offer the user that much for free. I was impressed with the concept behind TinyWall therefore when it was first released, although the developer by his own admission was rather overwhelmed by the response. As the product was in beta status for quite some time, user feedback gave perhaps a degraded impression of its value. Now though, what better firewall could anyone have for free than one that just blocks everything by default?  OK, so there still isn't a fancy GUI to browse through but it's easy enough to whitelist what you need to grant connecting permissions to via the tray icon. You can even do this by “executable”, “process” or “window”, so enough options to make it easy. There's also a selection of default profiles to choose from including one called “Blind trust” which I guess is much like the trusted vendors list included with Comodo  Well worth a look now for anyone wanting full control over their program connections without the placebo garbage provided by many of the others. Still not for newbies, but does provide a platform to learn from for anyone so inclined.  
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04. Feb 2012, 04:20 AM
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#13 (permalink) | |
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Site Manager
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: South American Banana Republic, third bunch from the left
Posts: 9,250
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Quote:
Still has the odd bug like throwing up an error message when I tried to assign a different profile to an app on my system, but "cancel" soon cleared everything back to normal.
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15. Feb 2012, 08:22 AM
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#14 (permalink) |
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Site Manager
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: South American Banana Republic, third bunch from the left
Posts: 9,250
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Unfortunately a major flaw appeared for my with TinyWall today (Windows 7 x32). Despite having made no changes to the settings for days, I suddenly lost all network connectivity with both DSL and mobile broadband. It didn't take me long to figure out that disabling TinyWall returned this to normal. I then tried to uninstall TinyWall but was met with a message that the service was still running even though I followed the instructions for removal on their website. Disabling the service via Task Manager only served to see it restart immediately.
 I therefore went into safe mode and uninstalled from there. On reboot, no network again and I had to manually revert Windows firewall back to it's default settings, and reset my network adapter.IMO this is a great program but a few things still need sorting out and making easier for the average user as I'm sure many by now would still be looking at a blank screen.
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18. Feb 2012, 05:13 PM
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#15 (permalink) |
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Editor
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: இந்தியா, सिन्धु, India
Posts: 324
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@ MC: Thanks for recommending this! Just playing around with this and it seems to be okay.
Seems to have a default deny mode. If an application needs to access the internet, it needs to be whitelisted. Also seemingly consumes around 16 MB (which is not that bad)... Missing Comodo , but this one seems to be okay for now. Like you said, this is strictly for advanced users only.Constant development will improve this project. |
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19. Feb 2012, 03:44 AM
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#16 (permalink) | |
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Site Manager
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: South American Banana Republic, third bunch from the left
Posts: 9,250
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Quote:
I too love the idea of everything being denied by default so no need to worry about all those sneaky connections like Java, Ask and Kingsoft. I hope the developer will continue to work on it by making it a bit more robust and easier to work with for average folk.
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19. Feb 2012, 04:17 PM
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#17 (permalink) |
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Editor
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: இந்தியா, सिन्धु, India
Posts: 324
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For some weird reason, this has been slowing down my average browsing?
Memory consumption seems to be a bit weird... Back to the familiar feel of Comodo 
Last edited by Concerned User; 19. Feb 2012 at 04:39 PM. |
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24. Feb 2012, 05:09 PM
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#18 (permalink) |
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Full Member
Join Date: Oct 2010
Posts: 31
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Looks like you have found a real gem Eyeb. Even though V2.0 has only been out only a couple of days it appears very stable, has had all the bugs that were reported fixed, and more new features added. Have a real feeling this could really put the cats amongst the pigeons as far as some of the big guns in firewalls are concerned in the year to come. V2.0 download link.
http://tinywall.pados.hu/download.php Last edited by cheffo; 24. Feb 2012 at 05:28 PM. |
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