# norton and windows firewall



## mdsb117 (Feb 20, 2007)

my windows firewall and security center has been diasabled,,every time i do a scan via spybot it tells me this,,,but i believe it is because nortons firewall and windows firewall will not run together on the same computer with out causing damage,,is this correct??


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## Punktech (Mar 26, 2007)

No they can run together with no problems. it is norton trying to take over your system. However you need to use one firewall and one AV by principal so it is ok to keep the windows firewall off. It is nothing but a joke anyway.


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## Cellus (Aug 31, 2006)

The convenience of having only one Personal Firewall active is that you do not have to set up exceptions/rules/preferences multiple times (for each firewall). There can also be conflicts between Personal Firewalls, depending on how they monitor and hook onto connections, interface with the stack, etc.

Detecting Windows Firewall and the Windows Security Center as disabled through Spybot is more of an informational message to let you know that, under normal circumstances, them being disabled may be suspicious. However in the case of Norton, Symantec recommends Windows Firewall be disabled when using their Internet Worm Protection and/or Firewall. They also recommend turning off the Windows Security Center to prevent duplicate warnings as its functionality is essentially replaced by the Norton Protection Center.

You _can_ use more than one firewall, such as the case of using a Personal Firewall on your computer and an appliance (Hardware Firewall). The most common example of this for Home/SOHO users is a Personal Firewall and a router (with its basic firewall functionality). Different devices can take place of the router, such as a dedicated firewall appliance (physical or virtual), but in general you can technically have more than one firewall.

Windows Firewall by no means have nearly as much functionality as many Personal Firewalls on the market (pre-SP2's Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) is certainly a joke), however it is better than nothing. It's not uncommon for businesses to actually have Windows Firewall turned on on workstations as it comes with Windows XP and the performance hit is negligible (exceptions do need to be set however) - while the perimeter firewall and IDS/IPS should stop the lion's share of network attacks on the network, at least the workstations have a chance to stand on their own (eg: workstation is removed from protected network, perimeter firewall is bypassed, etc).


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