Stop Windows from calling home

[Tuxman]

Also, saying that running a software firewall is nowhere near as good as a hardware firewall is laughable due to the fact that hardware firewalls are SOFTWARE based running embedded on a set of dedicated hardware. In most cases, systems running personal firewalls are faster than the hardware included in the average home user firewall/router.

-Josh (January 05, 2010, 01:05 AM)

So being fast is more important to you than being secure? You can't count that.
BTW, the point here is "dedicated hardware", separated from a probably contaminated system where you should not trust any software.

[Josh]

Did I say that? Please quote me where I said I prefer speed over security. I am not saying that the windows firewall is the greatest solution but it is a good enough and more than enough of one for a good majority of the populus. Yes, there are far better FIREWALLS, but none of what you listed is directly related to the functions of a firewall. Telling people to disable something which they do not have a replacement for is not a solution.

[Tuxman]

Did I say that?

-Josh (January 05, 2010, 11:18 AM)

I thought your second sentence referred to your first one? (I quoted both.)

[Josh]

My second sentence does not imply that I prefer speed over security, merely that running a dedicated firewall on a modern pc is actually FASTER than on the router because of processor speed.

[Stoic Joker]

ICS is disabled by default, and the only unscheduled reboots in the last 10 years on the (approx 20) Windows servers I manage were due to either hardware failures or power outages that outlasted the UPS.

-Stoic Joker (January 04, 2010, 10:06 PM)

Do you have a clean & untweaked XP-SP2 you can confirm this on, or official docs? - I'm almost tempted to do a test install in vmware (damn insomnia!), but it'd make a helluva lot sense not to have it enabled by default.

-f0dder (January 04, 2010, 10:23 PM)

I don't really need them, but yes I've got a vanilla XP SP3 VPC I use for testing & such. While the Windows firewall & ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) are both part of the same service (binary) they are entirely different parts. When ICS is enabled (which actually requires 2 network interfaces...), the box it is enabled on becomes a (low tech) DHCP server for the other clients that are/will be using the shared connection.

...I'm guessing I can safely stop here (to avoid looking pedantic), as I'm reasonably sure you can guess the rest.