firewall exceptions

[starchild]

Hi guys.I use Sygate personal firewall and with settings I dont know what to allow.Meaning I will get pop-ups asking if you want to allow win32 generic host processes to access etc..I really dont know what all these windows processes are for so as a general rule do you just NOT ALLOW these processes or ???

[CrowdAds]

[PCBruiser]

You must permit Generic Host Processes because that partially controls program access to the internet. If you don't permit that, you will have no program internet access. Some other Windows system functions will be needed also in most cases. If you print to a network printer, for example, it will be necessary to permit spooler to have access.

[starchild]

Thanks PCB,Is there a site/list of all xp processes and what they do?NVM B-Vipers has a list I think

[PCBruiser]

You will need a few: Run DLL as an app, Spooler service, Services and Controller app, Automatic Updates if you have Windows update itself automatically (which I don't recommend). But, those are the major ones which will need access. Permit them as they come up, not before, no need to permit anything that you are not actually using (spooler for example doesn't need network access if your only printer is locally attached to your system via USB, etc.).

Our paper on Security has information of all the Windows services, but certainly not all the processes, there are far too many of them for us to cover in anything less than a book sized article.