elspeth wrote:What a micromanaged dissonance, business ethics of a shark.*
It isn't a matter of business ethics. Microsoft has designed Windows to cede firewall management to whatever third-party firewall is installed in order to prevent problems that might arise between the Windows Firewall and the third-party firewall. Whether the third-party firewall is disabled or not does not matter - WIndows defers all firewall control to the third-party. The situation of having two third-party firewalls, plus the WIndows firewall, installed is not one that would normally be encountered. That is why I posed the question. The situation you have is a matter of how WIndows is supposed to determine which firewall is in charge, not a matter of Norton hobbling the competition. To be honest, I have no idea which firewall would be in control in your situation - and that in itself is a problem, in that you really don't know what protection you have or whether that protection might be running into conflicts with the other firewall software. If keeping Comodo is your main priority, you should probably switch to Norton Antivirus, which does not include a firewall.