I forgot to say you don't have to buy anything. The free version of zonealarm works just fine and actually it's the one I use. Norton may come with a firewall but it's so industrial it's a waste(IMHO). If you don't understand it completely well you could goof up it's setting easily I might add. You think you have it covered but you do not. Good place to start is just test for leaks. Got any? Well then you need a firewall. Firewalls should be almost silent. Who cares if somebody is trying to connect just block em and don't bother me. Norton likes to tell you. In the big 1428 spew I was getting hundreds of attemps per day just on that one port. I don't even keep a log. I could care less. It works and that's all I need. It asks first time when you start a program if it can get on the web You approve it once or all the time so it don't ask again. If you don't know what that program does better search google for it. If you only need it once well approve it once. If it tries to connect again it will ask again. If file explorer tries getting on the web. Well now why would it need to do that? Look for a file? I block it. Oh and once you got it going note how many attempts are made to connect to your puter in the first 24 hours of using it. Both ways. It's a eye opener. Just remember without a firewall they connected and then can do anything you can do if they can connect. MemMonster. Well just my example there is tons of task managers out there completly free that work as well. What you want is a complete list of what is running and to be able to kill each and everyone of those processes. There is actually better free ones around some let you change the cpu priority on the fly for any and all apps.