Norman Personal Firewall - part III

Making the program work properly

What happened next was totally unexpected; the program allowed through all connections for any and all applications attempting a communication, even though the rules for each app instructed NPF to do the contrary. Even programs, which hadn't been executed before, could easily establish any network connection they tried. Thank goodness this was just a test and these apps were legitimate and friendly. I was very relieved that I'd thoroughly cleaned my system before hand of any malware, Trojan and virus!

I thought to myself that I shouldn't rush to judge and not to give up trying to make the firewall work properly, so I went to the security tab, where I was able to reset all settings and discard all previously created rules, so the list of rules was empty.

I wanted to start everything from scratch, assume that nothing happened and that I hadn't witnessed all this mess. I looked at various areas to assure myself that there were no rules for any program in place, so I could specify them anew.

As previously, I expected the program to bring up dialog boxes asking for my directions as more and more network connections were being initiated, but the program stood silent, letting all programs transmit data that tried.

To my understanding, the rules creation mechanism (called "rules assistant") was down for the count.

That's when I decided I'd had enough of NPF and to waste no more time on trying to make it work.

However, that wasn't the end to my troubles. After I closed the program and started my favorite firewall, the system crashed with the Blue Screen of Death, which was only cured by completely uninstalling Norman. I felt like I'd just been slimed.

Conclusion

The program I tried to review has potential. The first ten minutes it worked fine and I liked it.

I feel that the program's writers need to adapt it to a multitude of platforms and user preferences. And, they obviously need to test it more rigidly. I'll definitely consider their next version a candidate for a repeat test. I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually ranks high on my recommended list.

But, it needs a lot of work and I'm glad I'm not on the support team trying to soothe the upsets of purchasers of the software.

Developer's web site: www.norman.com

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