Antivirus crashed, now after reinstall firewall is picking up a lot more

Hi

My antivitus/firewall program recently crashed (not for the first time either!) and had to be reinstalled. Im using PC Guard which is supplied free from my isp (blueyonder.) As PC Guard contains both the AV and firewall I wasnt protected at all for 15-20mins and now the firewall is logging around 1000 things daily where previously it was about 50. Also windows always shows up as transmits/receives which didnt happen previosly.

Im connected through a Netgear WGR614v6 router which supposedly blocks any ports unless I specifically open them (I have a few open for P2P) so I cant understand why much is getting to the software firewall in the first place.

Can anyone offer any advice? Is there anywhere where I can scan every port on my PC to see if its open?

Would also like to change to avg free antivirus because ive heard PC Guard isnt all that (I just like having AV/Firewall and Ad/Popup blocker in 1 packeage). So any suggestions about free AV and firewalls would be appreciated also.

Thanks

 

I understand that could be the case I just thought the hardware firewall should be blocking the majority of stuff before it even reaches the software firewall.

I will give this a try later on.

Thanks for your reccomendations Pete, i've heard Kerio mentioned elsewhere, might give that a try as PC Guard is A) Prone to crashes that require reinstallintion and B) Seems to hog a lot of memory. Allready have google toolbar installed but wasnt sure if it was any good for blocking popups.

Still cant understand why windows is shown as connected to the internet either?