Windows Vista Vista's Firewall: outbound blocking

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128834-c,vistalonghorn/article.html

I'm trying to make a rule in Viista's FW to block any strange program to connect out.

To get to it:
Control Panel > Classic View > Adminstrative Tools > Windows Firewall with advanced security and brings up Microsoft Management Console (MMC).

The outbound rules can be modified and added to. There is a provision for adding custom rules. So far not having success when trying to add logic that says block anything not currently on the system. Whether I succeed or not, this is certainly not going to be tried by the vast majority of users.

In looking for links on this, came across this 3rd party firewall add-on:
VistaFirewallControl By SphinxSoftware

http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/details.aspx?view=info&itemid=3331766

Have not tried this yet.

Regards - Charles

 

Hi Charles,

I have installed the Sphinx firewall for a trial run, and so far it is proving that it works OK. Each new program or process trying to connect out triggers a window which allows you to set the rules. Out only, In only, both ways, or completely blocked from net access. The price is right anyway:

Roger

 

Hi Roger, thanks for the feeddback, am going to try it today.

Regards - Charles

 

Is the Sphinx Vista Firewall Controller still working well for y'all, no glitches?

 

Hi Rex,

No glitches. For someone that wants minimum "noise ", its ideal.

Two processes:

VistaFirewallControl @ about 5.7 MB
VistaFirewallService @ about 5.4 MB

It varies - sometimes less, but that's the ballpark.

Regards - Charles

 

Thanks Charles, sounds like a good Vista addon to have, light and effective.

Firewall Guide lists Sphinx as gone or going out of business, that's odd. But their free Vista firewall control looks like a good addon that makes the Vista fw much more effective. It will be interesting to see if it makes the Vista FW as good a standalone software firewall as the top brands... time will tell ... others, like this AVG fw has done well though its not top ranked. And I'm not a Danger Surfer
http://www.firewallguide.com/software.htm

And o'course we can run only one soft FW.

 

Maybe, maybe not but I just tried clicking on charlesvar's link to it and I get a windows market place page that says page not found on it. Seems there may be something to this.

 

Yep, got a "page doesn't exist ".

That woud be really to bad. I hope the software is archived somewhere.

Regards - Charles

 

Try http://sphinx-soft.com/Vista/index.html. Not free on that site, though.

 

Hi Miz,

Thanks for finding the site.

It is free even though you go thru "Download and buy" - contradictory, maybe a hint they're going to start to charge for it

Regards - Charles