PC Decrapifier

[caravel]

it was so weird when my friend had to close it down before playing some game because somehow the game could never start as long as the firewall ran.

Probably the game was trying to access the LAN and the firewall blocked it from doing so. I have had this problem a few times with even the windows firewall (not that I use the windows firewall these days but if it came down to a choice between that and buying a crapware product such as Norton, then the windows firewall wins hands down).

Personal firewalls fit the bloatware category IMHO. You're better off running a firewall such as the SPI firewalls found on most NAT routers. Personal firewalls tend to be based on "scareware" marketing principles in that the average user will buy one of these products and then clamour over the fact that it blocked ten trillion "threats" while he/she was online. These so called "threats", as most of us here know, are nothing but normal internet traffic, but this type of firewall software likes to make a big show to justify it's being on your computer in the first place and gives the impression to the user that every hacker on the planet is trying to infiltrate his/her windows box.