Panda firewall

I'm using Panda Titanium 2006, and its firewall is giving me grief with Second Life. If the Panda firewall is enabled, Second Life gives me a network-related error message when starting (error #4) and then quits. Second Life co-exists with the WinXP firewall no problem.

Unfortunately, Second Life doesn't show up in the Panda firewall's program list to allow me to configure it. All my other net-aware programs, like LimeWire, appear in the list no problem. Nor does Panda allow me to configure individual port # access - or to manually add a program, like you can with the WinXP firewall's" exceptions" list.

I've searched the SL forums here, and I saw a few references to problems w/ the Panda firewall, but no actual solutions. Also, no Panda info in the firewall section of the SL faq.

I've tried asking Panda's tech support people, but they were pretty clueless. Their only solution was to upgrade to Platinum, which *does* allow you to manually add programs to the firewall list & configure them. I'd rather not have to upgrade - besides the add'l $, it has a buncha other crap ("features" that I don't need or want.

I've tried to figure out where the Panda firewall stores it's list of allowed/unallowed programs (registry?, files?) so that I could perhaps modify it and force SL to be added to the list - no luck.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions about this? I really like Panda otherwise, and I'd prefer to use it instead of the WinXP firewall if possible.

thanks in advance,
JohnB

Use an operating system where a firewall isn't the only (or even preferred) way of limiting access to local services?

If you have to use Windows XP (and I understand that, yes, you probably have to), use the Windows XP firewall to block external access to Windows Networking (Lan Manager) services, and don't run stuff like the personal web server, and don't use Internet Explorer or Outlook, and you should be about as OK as you can be with any firewall.

Thanks, Argent.

I understand (and to a certain extent agree with) your statements about the lameness of Windows. I bet you're a LinuxHead, right? That's OK - some of my best friends are

Unfortunately, changing my O/S isn't really a viable option at this point.

oh well - maybe someone will post a solution for me.

best,
JohnB (for Eiremenna)

Not in the slightest.

I did, the second paragraph of my message had nothing to do with anything but Windows.

okey dokey. thanks.

well if i were using panda and it didnt perform to 100% of what i needed i would take it back, the windows XP firewall seems to do just fine, and if you have a router mixed in theres no point in software firewalls at all
if you must have one use something like zone alarm, at least it ask's you.

I recently had to uninstall/re-install the Panda Titanium software for another reason. When I re-installed it, this time I was very careful to respond to some firewall prompts I rcvd the first time I tried to SL: one asking me if I wanted the Panda firewall to allow Outbound access for this program; and another asking about Inbound. I answered "Yes - Always Allow" to both - and now everything works swimmingly!

I think I had previously answered "No" to those Panda firewall prompts. The stupid thing about Panda is that once I answered NO, I couldn't find any way to change my mind to make the firewall allow In/Out access for SL again! (see previous posts).

Anyway, all's well that ends well - especially since I didn't havta resort to upgrading the Panda s/w to Platinum.

JohnB

I agree with this, if you have a router, that is your firewall, just configure that to what security settings you want. No need to slow down your computer and get weird network issues with a software firewall.