Disable Norton Firewall--Win 98

I'm working on my son's new el-cheapo pc which came with a Norton AntiVirus, Firewall, etc. OS is Win98. I have no desire to learn much about Norton since it is not what I use and I would like to disable the firewall permanently since he's having too many problems with it. Of course, we want to keep the anti-virus program running. I have disabled the firewall in the taskbar but I'm unsure of what to get rid of in msconfig, etc.

I searched archived messages for an answer but messages related to firewalls seemed to quickly go far afield without answering this question. Have also looked on the net and can't seem to find what I need.

Oh! BTW, I have a Linksys router on our home network thus I don't feel I want to deal with Norton.

Thanks for your help.

 

You don't say what Norton version but two ways should allow you to disable their firewall.

1. On the left side of the Norton Personal Firewall window, click Internet Status~Current Status.
2. In the current status window, click Disable

Or right-click on the Norton Personal Firewall icon in the notification area of the windows taskbar and select disable.

Congratualtions. The PC is now unprotected by a firewall. And while you don't say what model router/switch, unless it is a very recent Linksys, it probably doesn't have a firewall in it either. The 4 port version is most popular with home users. The BEFSR41 does not have a firewall. BEFSX41 does.

 

I would not be doing this if the pc was unprotected. Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.

Carol

 

Newt

Help me out a bit . Would you please clear this up a bit.

I was under the impression ( maybe the wrong one ) that the BEFSR41 had ( or is ) a Hardware Firewall. ( incoming only )

Or is it just using NAT ?

Is the BEFSX41 better ? If so. Guess what will happen here ?

BillyBob

 

BEFSR41 - no firewall. The original write-up sorta made NAT sound like it did firewall duties.

BEFSX41 - from what I read, not only has a firewall built in but some other goodies although most would only be useful to a business or home network where you wanted to connect safely and securely from outside.

That being said, while I've had great luck with my Linksys BEFSR41, I'm considering an upgrade but have been looking more at the D-Link Express EtherNetwork DI-704UP. Firewall, built in USB print server, and basically all the things I'd need with the usual D-Link price that is lower than Linksys.

 

Thank you Newt.

But the BEFSX41 does not seem to be like anything that I would really need. At least not right now.

I do have the BEFSR41.

BillyBob

 

Okay, now I am really confused because my documentation says that the built-in NAT technology in the BEFSR41 acts as firewall. I have run numerous tests which indicate that all ports are in stealth mode.

Carol

 

It is sorta confusing at times but here it is for you in English.

NAT = Network Address Translation.

NAT is a really great idea someone had to allow multiple users on a LAN (local area network) to share a single real/leased/registered/public IP address. It works as follows (and is the same if you use ICS (internet connection sharing) that Microsoft provides:

Say you have 4 PCs at home and something that will do NAT for you. The NAT device assigns itself the real (as provided by your ISP) IP address and it's the only device that can be directly seen from the internet. NAT, in turn and using DHCP usually, assigns all your local PCs an IP address in one of the private (never assigned for real) address groups. 192.168.x.x is most common. These addresses cannot cross a router and get to another network or to the internet.

When one of your PCs wants to connect to an internet address, it sends the request packet via the 'gateway' address it has and that will be the internal IP address of the NAT device. NAT traps the packet, stores info about it in a database, changes the 'From' IP from yours to the public address it has, and sends the packet out to the internet.

Any response will come back to the NAT device because that's the address it's replying to. NAT will check the packet against it's database to decide if it's a response and if so, which PC should get it. The packet is then changed and the public IP address is changed to the proper internal address and you get your response. Lots of housekeeping but hardware can do this stuff really fast.

However, if a packet comes to the NAT device that doesn't match with any request from your LAN, the packet is discarded and you never see it. So an internet probe of the public IP address never gets in. In this respect, it certainly does protect you from outside attack - and is basically doing the job of a firewall.

It provides no protection whatever if one of your PCs started the conversation though. You get spyware on your PC when you surf the web. AV software doesn't stop spyware since it isn't a virus/trojan/worm. When the spyware 'calls home' it has started the conversation from your PC so your NAT device treats the packet as legit, sends it, and passes along any response it gets right back to you. This is nothing you could notice either unless you have a real firewall installed that looks at inbound and outbound traffic. Unless your browser and similar settings are lots tighter than most of us are willing to use, the spyware could also send out a request for something that would damage your PC and that something would slip right in to you.

If any of this didn't make sense to you then I need to explain better. If you have more questions after the 'answers' above, please ask.