Beta Test Sunbelt Software’s Firewall

Friday, May 2nd, 2008
by Ron Schenone

Sunbelt Software is looking for some Beta testers to take its new firewall for a spin. On its forum, the lead engineer has posted a link for the download as well as a registration key good until July 31, 2008. He also states that:

Changes

Significant improvement in packet filtering

Significant improvement in network performance when Web filtering is enabled.

Enhanced Process Injection prevention to prevent code inject attempts into Windows system DLLs.

Corrected numerous application crashes in the firewall service.

Corrected various crashes in assist.exe

Enabled support for Windows Vista

Corrected issue in which binary data appeared in logs

Significant improvement in product stability

Enhanced leak test protection

System Requirements

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher

IBM compatible 400 MHz computer with at least 256 MB of RAM

Windows 2000 Pro SP4R1 or greater, Windows XP SP2 or greater (Pro, Home, Media Center), Windows Vista (incl. SP1)

15 MB of available hard drive space

The Sunbelt Software site is here.

Comments welcome.

5 Comments

Mario_372

May 2nd, 2008
at 10:29am

idk much about sunbelt,but i think that avg pro with their firewall works pretty good.

Zenium

May 5th, 2008
at 4:17pm

Had a paid version of Kerio (oops Sunbelt) personal firewall. Did not like for a couple of reason.

For one I could not get it to work properly with client OpenVPN. (Did not have this problem with other firewalls.) For another it requires IE 5.5 or later. No firewall software should require IE for their user interface.

Also, even though I have removed the software, somewhere on my system the host intrusion protect system (HIPS) is still running. The HIPS log file is constantly being updated. Wish I could find the service / DLL to shut the thing off.

So, I am not a fan of Kerio (oops again, Sunbelt) firewall.

Ron Schenone

May 5th, 2008
at 5:46pm

Hi Zenium,
Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

Kyle

May 16th, 2008
at 3:25pm

I’ve been running the new beta version of Sunbelt Personal Firewall for about a week now. While I have not specifically tried its effectiveness I can say that is is proving to be a very stable firewall - better than my Outpost Firewall Professional 2008. It also is working well with both Kaspersky 6.0 and Iolo Antivirus. All-in-all I think Sunbelt has made some good changes since last I tried their product. Its also light on resources which I appreciate.

Ron Schenone

May 16th, 2008
at 6:41pm

Hi Kyle,
Thanks for sharing your experience with us. I’m glad SPF is wokring well for you.
Regards, Ron

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