Need advice on SYGATE Firewall

I couldn't say for sure what that is, as I don't have access to the full info that you have, but this is where researching requests comes into it, once you've done this for a while you will start to recognise certain things, and deal with them knowing what they are etc, but new ones you have to search if you can't see enough info to know what it is straight away, Answers That Work is a great resource for checking out unknown files, and can often tell you what it is connected with so you know enough to choose what to do, or simply google the name, you usually get quick answers\guides for most things, hope this helps, but IMHO you would be better suited with a different firewall, for sanity alone if nothing else lol.

8210GUY: Thanks for your input…. Although I am very impressed with this SYGATE system….it seems to me that NORTON (who owns it now) has disabled many of the features, and when you attempt to investigate, it takes you directly to the NORTON "spend money here" site. The two issues I'm a bit irked with at the moment are as follows: I set the Chinese IPs in the special rules to be blocked completely….and yet the silly thing still tells me constantly that the computer is being scanned from those IPs. OK….fair enough….and with the advice in this thread, I decided to chill out and click the box "DO NOT SHOW THIS NOTIFICATION ANYMORE" and yet it still pops up, and so often, it actually interrupts my work, as the notification stops my page priority until I reset it…. The other thing that seems to have started happening since I blocked those Chinese IPs…is this contiuous …almost every few minutes….notification that reads: An application named NT Kernel & System (file name ntoskrnl.exe) has been blocked from accessing the network. It's from the same source every time, and I have checked the "DON'T SHOW ANYMORE" box several times, and yet it still shows every time. It's a shame really….because unless I can get this stuff resolved, I'll be forced to find another firewall….and I kind of like this one and all of it's tools.

TBH I have a simplistic view with firewalls, I don't understand the various workings, and feel I don't need to, I simply choose to stick with known and trusted firewalls that over time others far more knowledgeable than myself with such deep workings start rating it as a worthy tool, and as such I trust that they know how to set it up so that I don't need to worry, so when installing a firewall the ONLY setting I change is to turn off notifications, and just leave the firewall to do what it's good at doing, a large part of not touching any rules etc is I don't know how it could affect it's performance, and fear the possibility of opening a back door for things too get in, or reduce it's ability to do it's job. I use a 3rd party firewall for 2 reasons, although one is not as important with windows 7, and simply put firewalls from m$ were not that good up until recently (OK maybe a few years now), but my main reason is because I want outgoing control, I don't need to be told every x amount of time the firewall has blocked some incoming something or other, I trust it to do this by default, if it wasn't trusted to do this then people would not be suggesting the use of that program, but sometimes the first sign of trouble can be a file asking to go out every 10 seconds or the like, I ALWAYS make my email ask each and every time it goes out, as this is a common source of spreading infection(s), and it was this very action that made me aware of an infection many years back now. I still believe you would be better off with another firewall, the ones I mentioned earlier in the thread both are very good, and my preference is ZA, because it automatically deals with known system processes, and trusted programs etc and configures them for you, so you are not bothered as much by them, then permanently allow what you know to be safe go out, turn off notifications, and off you go, simple, and stress free, but it is still doing exactly what you want, it just doesn't bother you more than it has to, and the process your mentioning would appear to be a system operating file, and as such should be allowed access. But I don't know firewalls deeply enough to guide you through the sorts of settings you have been touching, and I am pretty confident that if you had not set a rule about the chinese ip, it would of been blocking by default anyway, and if you run the scans I gave you they would show if anything can get through your firewall, sorry I can't offer deeper guidance, but I honestly believe you have little to worry about as long as you use a good firewall and just let it do it's job, hope this puts you a bit more at ease anyway.