McAfee firewall question

[HotStuff]

If you have McAfee firewall, what security setting do you have?

I have it set at standard security. At that level each time an application changes you have to 'Grant access' to continue.

It has recently become a pain with punkbuster on COD4, they have released 3 new versions in the past week, just look at the update history:

http://www.punkbuster.com/index.php?page=support-cod4.php

So when punkbuster is updated and I start COD4 I have to ALT tab out to grant access as it "has changed since allowing access". Sometimes it's difficult to tell in game and you end up being kicked out the game or the frame rate reduces with McAfee taking over the PC waiting for an input from you. What a pain!!

To get rid of this annoyance, I could reduce the security level by one notch to "trusting" which means McAfee will will not ask for permission for any applications accessing the internet. Is this advisable?

 

[Taffy]

If PunkBuster has updated this much recently, I can't see much reason to update it AGAIN very soon. Besides, you only keep to alt-tab once each update, right? I'd keep it as is, but I'm pretty cautious with viruses etc.

 

[thatbloke]

I'd keep it as-is.

Chances are the punkbuster update was initially a scheduled update, then perhaps there was a problem with it that needed patching quickly.

The whole point of a firewall denying a programm access to the net if it has changed is that if you have not knowingly changed the program, it is possible that is has bene changed for a malicious purpose and therefore should be blocked until you can find out why it has changed.

 

[Traxata]

Yeah, I hate all of that 'a program requires access' crap, therefore I have a nice stand-alone firewall, theres nothing else running on my PC either.

I generally wouldn't recommend doing this yourself though I regularly reformat because its generally easier then trawling through folders and stuff trying to fix everything making the PC slow, a 20min reformat is much better in my humble opinion

 

[thatbloke]

Yeah, I hate all of that 'a program requires access' crap, therefore I have a nice stand-alone firewall, theres nothing else running on my PC either.

I generally wouldn't recommend doing this yourself though I regularly reformat because its generally easier then trawling through folders and stuff trying to fix everything making the PC slow, a 20min reformat is much better in my humble opinion

I really don't see why people have to reformat all the time. If you look after your system properly you don't get any slowdown, and if you do, there is no problem that is NOT fixable.

I have had the same install of Windows XP Pro for about 3 years now and have never had or noticed any kind of slowdown.

The reformat/reinstall may only take 20 minutes but then you have to add on to that at least another couple of hours to get all your programs installed and configured correctly.

 

[Traxata]

All of my programs are installed on seperate drives

there is about 1/3 of the stuff there installed on this machine, like games that have recently come out, and photoshop (because its a bastard and won't work unless you physically install it yourself..)

other than that, theres nothing more that needs to be done, Ghosting is a brilliant thing bloke, a brilliant thing

 

[thatbloke]

All of my programs are installed on seperate drives

there is about 1/3 of the stuff there installed on this machine, like games that have recently come out, and photoshop (because its a bastard and won't work unless you physically install it yourself..)

other than that, theres nothing more that needs to be done, Ghosting is a brilliant thing bloke, a brilliant thing

And what about all the registry entries that disappear?

 

[Traxata]

Most of them don't make any difference