TSGL: Online Armor Personal Firewall

[Mike Ferrell]

I recently saw a rating of several paid and free firewalls.  At the top was the free Online Armor Personal Firewall so I decided to try it out.  After installing I immediately had PC shutdown problems and had to reboot in safe mode.  Ultimately, I ended up uninstalling it and doing a System Restore to alleviate the problem.  I just recently bought this new PC with Vista.  It came with Norton trialware so I have turned off the Windows Firewall which I understand is not much good anyway.  

Does anyone here have experience with this Armor Firewall in combination with Vista, or do you have any suggestions or comments for me?  I understand that two different firewalls sometimes don't play well together, but I did not have the opportunity to turn Norton off before I had the problem.  The Armor installation software shut down the computer after finishing up and before I turned off Norton, and that's when I ran into the shutdown problems.  I don't know if the Armor/Norton issue is what caused my problem or not.

I'm thinking about trying again.  Just what procedure should I use to safely get on the internet, download and install Armor, and meanwhile turn off Norton.  I'm afraid to turn Norton off before going on the internet.  I would very much like to use Armor if I can.  Note, in the past with XP I always used Zone Alarm, but it was rated "very poor" in the same study.  

If anyone is using Armor Firewall please let me know how you like it, especially if you have Vista.  

Meanwhile, I also found a couple free virus scanners that I am thinking about using in conjunction with my AVG Free.  These are Avast and Avira.  I know one antivirus won't find everything, so I would like to have at least two.  Any comments about Avast and Avira?

Thanks,
Mike