Firewall for Win98?

I'm trying to get a firewall installed on a machine running Win98. Because free is good, I tried to install Zonealarm, but it no longer works with Win98.

So, is there a good, free firewall I might download?

How spendy and difficult is to upgrade to Win ME? It comes with a firewall.

What about a hardware firewall?

thx

me

Hmmm... There's the 'old'(v2.1.5) freeware version of Kerio Personal Firewall/Tiny Personal Firewall. Setting it up though can get a bit technical but there's a couple of pre-configured firewall rules that's available which you can use.

You can find the download link, rulesets, etc. here.

I'm still using it in place of XP's firewall.

legtu said:

Hmmm... There's the 'old'(v2.1.5) freeware version of Kerio Personal Firewall/Tiny Personal Firewall. Setting it up though can get a bit technical but there's a couple of pre-configured firewall rules that's available which you can use.

You can find the download link, rulesets, etc. here.

I'm still using it in place of XP's firewall.

Click to expand...

I agree the last freeware version of Tiny Personal Firewall is great and I keep it on my keychain for situations such as yours. If you have any trouble finding a download link PM your email address and I will send it your way.

powernoodle said:

I'm trying to get a firewall installed on a machine running Win98. Because free is good, I tried to install Zonealarm, but it no longer works with Win98.

So, is there a good, free firewall I might download?

How spendy and difficult is to upgrade to Win ME? It comes with a firewall.

What about a hardware firewall?

thx

me

Click to expand...

With Windows ME, you can pretty much say goodbye to any ISA 16 bit cards in your computer.

USB support will however improve some.

The windows ME change also gets rid of your config.sys and your autoexec.bat bootup files.
Some dos programs and games may not work anymore, depending on your hardware and it's winME drivers.
You also cannot reboot into pure dos mode like you could with win98 and win95. :huh2:

Overall, winME has been one of the least favorite Microsoft based OS's.
Lotsa problems popped up for some people doing "upgrades" from win98 to winME.

Win98 second edition has been my personal favorite for older computers,
while WinXP Pro has been for my new one.
(I'm using my new one right now.)

FYI Win98 is no longer under support from Microsoft and therefore you are no longer going to get Windows updates for security patches and such. ME is not supported either. You have to get to at least XP Service Pack 2 to be under support and get updates.

What are the specs of the machine you are trying to use? Probably would be best to switch to XP

AlexGT

powernoodle, i use zonealarm with windows 98se. za no longer supports this operating system and i can not do updates. however, i did download this when za supported w98. za works excellent. what type of isp do you have? roadrunner gives you a free antivirus and firewall. its decent, but i prefer za.

If you search diligently someone has the older zonealarm version installer that does work on win98se. I may have it on disc. PM me if you are interested and if so when I get to my own machine early next week I can see about getting it to you. At least I can look up the version sooner than that; you can search for it on google by the name of the installer program. I have recovered quite a few outdated programs that way.

You brought up a hardware firewall. While most likely nothing within your rice range will be a true firewall, those nat-routers give you pretty good security for a home user.

They should cost around USD 30 - 50 for dsl lines, are very easy to set up AND they will provide much higher security than a personal firewall installed on your computer (as they are much harder to compromise by programs run on your computer).

So a nat-router is a pretty good choice. It also will not care if you ever change the computer behind it or add some computers. It will just provide a somewhat secured internet access for all attached computers.

What you really want to install on your computer is an up-to-date anti-virus software.

always check

www.oldversion.com for older versions of software. You may just find what you need.

Here is a list of older versions of zone alarm on that site.
link.
I'm not sure which one is right though.

EDIT:
Well, the website was working. :huh2:
It just quit on me.

Another edit:
Website is working again now.
Seems a little shaky, but works when it's working.

powernoodle said:

...How spendy and difficult is to upgrade to Win ME? It comes with a firewall....

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure that the "firewall" in ME is only a firewall as defined by Microsoft. The rest of the world calls it half a firewall. If it was actually capable of stopping any malware on your box from phoning home, half of Microsoft's DooDaas like Windows Media Player wouldn't work.

A real firewall gives the user control over what goes in AND what goes out of his own computer. For that reason ME doesn't have a firewall no matter how many times Microsoft claims it does.

Win ME doesn't come with a Firewall. I've been running one machine on ME since 1999 and I use version 3.7 of ZoneAlarm. That's what I recommend. It's never given me a problem. Same link as above here to get a copy.

I use Kerio 2.1.5 on Win98 SE. Not only does it work but it's light on memory/CPU usage so if you have an older machine it won't slow you down too much.

Since Win98 isn't supported with updates anymore, please consider disabling ActiveX, any scripting, third party browser extensions and set everything in the Internet Zone to the most restrictive. Make sure nothing is in your Trusted Sites list. Then switch to Firefox.

powernoodle said:

How spendy and difficult is to upgrade to Win ME?

Click to expand...

Win ME is a horrible OS compared to Win 98. Win 98 is actually quite a decent OS, if you get rid of the miserable, crash-prone, stock Explorer shell.

1. Backup your data, then download and install the free version of 98Lite, using your Win 98 install disks. Will improve both performance and stability. Will free up lots of memory and system resources. Your computer will run faster and smoother. Lockups and crashes will become vanishingly rare.

2. Download and install Opera or Firefox. Both are good, both are free. Both offer superior performance to the stock Internet Explorer browser. Both are far more secure than the stock Microsoft browser. (I've used both and for the moment I prefer Opera, but Firefox is good too.)

3. Go with a hardware solution for your firewall. Simple to set up, more foolproof than software solutions, inexpensive, and will not slow your computer down because it won't use any system resources.

h_nu said:

I use Kerio 2.1.5 on Win98 SE. Not only does it work but it's light on memory/CPU usage so if you have an older machine it won't slow you down too much.

Click to expand...

Excellent point because any machine running 9x probably doesn't have enough memory to comfortably run XP (XP runs fine on machines as slow as 400MHz but needs at least 256MB of memory; 512 is better).

I'd suggest the much faster/lighter Win95 shell in 98 or ME (same thing 98Lite does, only you can easily switch back and forth between shells as you please-now that disk space is so cheap). You only need a boot floppy to replace these files with their 95 equivalents:

Explorer.exe (Windows directory)
ComDlg32.dll (WindowsSystem directory)
Shell32.dll (WindowsSystem directory)
Notepad.exe (Windows directory)
Wordpad.exe (Windows directory)

Works perfectly in 98, but in ME minor things like the help system and WindowsUpdate do not work when using the 95 shell. Since there will no longer be any new updates, just update it then switch to the 95 shell ME with the 95 shell is fantastically stable and uses the more modern WDM driver base with improved support for USB, FAT32 and easier networking including ICS.

As mentioned, NAT is great by itself, and SPI is a fine addition if you take the time to setup rules. But unlike a hardware firewall, a good software one will prevent outbound traffic too. I used Zonealarm 2.6.88 and then Kerio 2.15 on all my 9x machines and liked them both.