I am looking for a third party firewall that offers solid protection & is user friendly, light on resources, etc.

My only hesitation is since I’m not very familiar with computers outside surfing the web, e-mail, basic programs, etc, I’m afraid that I will give access to bad "people" and programs. Like for instance, on the Zone Alarm and I’m sure other firewalls, the pop ups come up to ask if you want to accept or deny access. If they randomly come up, how do I be positive that the program is safe? If I said "ok" by accident, it’s then possible for pretty bad things to happen to my computer, correct?

Any input for a beginner would be greatly appreciated. Also, if you can suggest a user friendly, solid firewall that’s light on resources that would be great.

I have Windows XP SP2, IE 6, and I use the computer for surfing the web, e-mail, and realplayer, etc. I have 1 GB of RAM.

I had yahoo my homepage, was looking on another web site at the time the spyware toolbar popped up, it is one of those automatic anti spyware pop ups, annoying!!!
Help me restore my settings, please.
i went to add/remove and cannot find the correct program. i don’t know how to find out what the program attached to my computer as.

i HAD zone alarm…and things were FINE. it kept trying to get me to update and finally i did. something went wrong and it didn’t install, there was some error, i can’t remember what one. anyway, i uninstalled it and everything, even went to add/remove programs and it was gone. tried to download the free one again and it still ends up with an error. now i keep getting viruses and crazy IE pop-ups and i use firefox not IE. why won’t it just install again??

This morning I started getting these pop-ups saying that my computer is infected and I should buy this security program called AV. I know this is a scam and have not bought anything, but this virus won’t let me get on the internet, the only page I can connect to is the AV page. I’ve tried to turn my computer on in safe mode with networking, but for some reason I cannot connect to the internet. I have no idea what to do, can anyone help me out?

I have recently got a free version of Zone Alarm firewall becuase my LITTLE sister somehow got a virus and i think i removed it with AVG anti virus but when i turn off zone alarm pop-ups occur a lot, and when i use a search engine, when i click on a result, i will get redirected to add websites all the time. Also, when I watch movies, music, etc the audio and video stops for a split second like a scratched cd, I know this is becuase of Zone Alarm so i want to delete zone alarm. Plus Zone Alarm just takes up a lot of ram.

So, I want to be able to reamove zone alrm and my virus, or get a different FREE firewall, I tryed turning on windows firewall before i got zone alarm, but it turned right back off. I already have AVG anti virus (free) and it great. THANKS SO MUCH FOR HELPING

Okay, this began a couple days ago. There are a bunch of pop ups from the same advertisment "DATA PROTECTION" that keep popping up on my screen every 3 minutes or so. I keep closing them and there have been a couple times now that my computer "Automatically" shuts down. I have tried resetting my computer to an earlier day, but It wont let me go past the date request. There are few shortcut icons that say, troj001, troj002 troj003 and a couple that say porntube.com with tiny little pictures of ..porn i guess. on the bottom right corner of the toolbar, there are three little icons next to the time. A yellow shield with an exclamation point and when I click on it it says Danger! and a message to protect my computer from security threats. then a Green shield with a white check mark that says "Data Protection" I think this is the adverstisment that it wants me to get. And then there is a red shield with an X inside. Can someone please tell me what is going on and how I can fix this?. I want to get rid of these pop ups and get my own protection.

I seem to have caught the Data Protection virus today. I deleted all files mentioned by Aaron in the thread and the pop ups have disappeared (see http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AncmyCoCjDf9uJVrKNfpOujsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20100515134434AA1B0q1&show=7#profile-info-2cedf7da771160ebc4b10e55301e87b3aa) However, I still have the items "Windows Security Alert" and "Windows Security Center" (both are clearly part of this virus) in the taskbar. In addition my task Manager is greyed out and I cannot use it. Instead I need to use Process Explorer.The Window Security Items are regularly trying to reload "Data Protection" and I need to kill the process to stop it. Whats missing? How can I get rid of these items and get access to the task manager again?

My computer keeps on having "my security engine" pop ups saying that there is a couple of *infected programs* on my computer. I have to buy it for it to work but, Id rather just have a free one!!

DO NOT give me something to DOWNLOAD because i don’t trust spywares!
I just recently had another virus on my computer removed, and now this appears!
Please help, pop ups occur frequently, i can’t get onto my task manager, and it shuts down my computer at times!

I got the virus "Data Protection" spy ware on my computer. It seems I removed it because those little red x balloons are not in the right hand corner of the screen (where the clock is) anymore. But, it still seems to be bringing all the "pop ups" with it. I checked my Firefox to see if block "pop ups" is on and it is. Does anyone know how to stop this or how I can check/make sure it is completely removed?
Thanks!

A program called ‘ data protection’ was automatically installed on my pc yesterday. And since then I have regular pop-ups such as ‘ Danger, harmful files detected on your computer’ and a couple of fake windows security alerts. I used MBAM, ran a full malware scan. It found over 300 infected files and succesfully removed all of them. However a couple of pop-ups were still appearing and now ‘data protection’ has re-installed itself What should I do? Thanks
I ran the scan in safe mode, and i followed these instructions: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-data-protection
and its still there

A program called ‘ data protection’ was automatically installed on my pc yesterday. And since then I have regular pop-ups such as ‘ Danger, harmful files detected on your computer’ and a couple of fake windows security alerts. I used MBAM, ran a full malware scan. It found over 300 infected files and succesfully removed all of them. However a couple of pop-ups were still appearing and now ‘data protection’ has re-installed itself What should I do? Thanks

Right now I have Avira AntiVir, Zone Alarm Firewall, Spybot, SuperAntiSpyware, Malwarebytes & Spyware Blaster.

I have Comcast & I can download the Norton Security Suite for free, but I would have to uninstall all the programs I have on my computer now.

I know something is wrong with my computer because sometimes I keep getting all these pop-ups & I can’t control the mouse. I’ve ran all my programs & nothing is ever detected.

So I’m wondering should I uninstall all the programs on my computer & install the Norton Security Suite?

Comcast customers can now get Norton™ Security. It helps protect your computer, files and identity without slowing you down. Plus, get OnlineFamily.Norton to safeguard your kids online - 0 dollar value at no additional cost with your Comcast high-speed internet subscription.

http://security.comcast.net/?cid=NET_33_0

I somehow blocked my internet usage. The only way for me to get online is to shut down the firewall. How do I fix this? I originally downloaded the firewall because of all the pop ups I suddenly started receiving. Now I cant do anything. Please help.

1. stop av.exe processor under task manager
2. delete C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Loca\av.exe
3. delete C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Local Setting\Application Data\av.exe
4. delete HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.exe (default) –>There’s 2 file. One is good and the other is bad. The bad one is (Secfile).

I got all of these information by running malwarebytes, however before taking any action, I go into my folders and I did not find any of these files. Sometimes I wonder if Malwarebytes is the start of this scandel. I installed it for remove some trojan and then deleted it and install avast. A few weeks later, I got 2010 vista security popping up. So I have to reinstall malwarebytes and malwarebytes detects the malwares and deleted it. Then I deleted the malwarebytes again, a couple days later I got the 2010 pop ups again. So I have to reinstall the Malwarebytes again. This time after malwarebytes scan everything, I want to see for myself if those files actually exit. Went into the directory and I can not find any of those files. It is like you actually need Malwarebytes to do the work. I used spybot the first time I have 2010 pop up and spybot did not find any 2010 vista security threat, instead it only found some xupiter spyware. After spybot found xupiter and not 2010 vista security thread, I have to run malware b/c I still have 2010 popping up, of course, malewarebytes found the files to 2010 vista security. So with that say, what’s your point of view on this?

basically security tool virus thing got downloaded and it messed up my whole computer cant go onto sites without pop ups blocks and my computer screen is all black i have tried to download stuff to stop it i just cant succeed while doing it help please.

personal security anti-virus popped up, scared me to death, I apparently installed but did not purchase. I researched it on my iphone and found it was a scam. Wish I would have done that before installing it. Now I get pop-ups and blocked sites galore. I hate these jerks!

I keep getting pop ups that say that there are all kinds of trojans, and viruses attacking my computer. when i scan my system with mcafee there is nothing to be found. when i click the button from the popup to "fix" my system, i am immediately given the opportunity to buy a new computer security system from something called Internet Security 2010

My symantec antivirus security is out of date and i try to use live update and it says that it can’t establish a connection even though my internet is working fine. Worse part is that I think I have some spyware or malware because my computer is running very slow and random pop-ups occur a lot without me even being on a page with pop ups. Please help!!!

I already tried to scan my computer, i scanned it in safe mode and no viruses were found. I continue to get pop ups and my computer is still slow.

I think the virus is command.exe b/c i remember it popped up and went away. Just a few minutes ago i was looking through my files and i found a note (like from notepad) named DatRemover. here is a sample of what is contained:

Deleting dat files:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Verizon\Verizon Internet Security Suite\Spyware.dat
Deleting dat files:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Verizon\Verizon Internet Security Suite\Virus.dat
Deleting dat files:
Deleting key files:

Now im thinking that this is what’s keeping my virus scanner from finding this virus. it’s freaking deleting everything lol. Somebody help me please