Information about Firewalls
Although firewalls will give your protection a boost, configuring a firewall can take quite some time but is essential to maintain your safety. Some firewalls, like the windows firewall, only block external traffic, so when you've got a trojan trying to communicate with the outside world, no action will be taken. Installing two or more firewalls will cause problems, the programs can disable each other or make your system unstable, thus leaving you vulnerable to attacks. Two or more active firewalls on your system can also block your internet connection
After installing a firewall, disable the windows firewall, if the installed firewall didn't do so. Goto start->control panel->security center. There you can disable the firewall
The minimum requirements for a 'safe' firewall:
- Blocks both external and internal requests
Preferred/recommended features of a good scanner:
- Good overview of the current connections so you can see what's happening
- Highly configureable, since a lot of programs use ports, you need to open certain ports. A good interface will simplify this task significantly
- A logfile, so when someone tries to hack into your system, you can trace the hacker or report the hacker, using the log, at your or their ISP so appropriate action can be taken
Related: To view a list of all communication ports and applications which use those ports (so you can configure your firewall accordingly) go here