[Pc_Support] RE: ClamAv on windows??? -- nVidia firewall

[Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org>]

From: Damien McKenna <dmckenna at thelimucompany.com>
> FYI I've been reading on Anandtech's forums and a good many people
> have been having problems with the firewall, it seems it can interfere
> with IIRC the IDE or something when using certain driver releases.

Really?  Hmmm, I'll have to investigate.
I found this thread:  
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=27&threadid=1581745&enterthread=y  

I see a lot of complaints in general -- e.g., the IDE.  Yes, nVidia hasn't gotten
NCQ in its SATA chipsets -- but most other chipset have the _same_ issues.
As far as their IDE driver "issues" -- I only noted that nVidia purposely
uses a "unified driver" for its ATA+SATA, instead of relying on Windows'
drivers.  That's actually a bonus IMHO, because it means that there is
a single "ntbootdd.sys" driver and set of registry entries, no matter
what ATA or SATA device you use to boot.  That's how I was able to
switch from ATA to SATA as my boot device without issue.

But back to the firewall, it _does_ require you to "know what you are doing"
when you have it in the more secure modes.  I.e., you can tell it to never
allow a program to run, and you have to go to the firewall interface to
change that. Think of it kinda like "Ask me before accepting a cookie" in
Mozilla/Firefox. If you don't want to be bothered, yeah, people might not
like it.

Frankly, I love it!  It's extremely valuable IMHO.  It's not quite a "hardware
firewall" like they market it as.  But it _does_ have basic features in the
NIC, combined with Windows kernel-level integration for anti-hacking at
the driver itself.  Much, much better than Symantec IMHO, largely because
of this arrangement.


--
Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org