Glass Wire firewall disabled by AVG Security 2015

GlassWire Help
1

Glass Wire firewall disabled by AVG Security 2015. Even when AVG firewall is turned off? Any suggestions
Regards
Darren

2

GlassWire uses the Windows firewall. It sounds like AVG disables the Windows firewall even when their own firewall is disabled, therefore GlassWire’s firewall tab cannot function.
It sounds like the only solution is to use an antivirus without firewall functionality, to use another product, or to use GlassWire as a security network monitor only and ignore its firewall functionality.

3

How come you do nothing to prevent this?
I was actually considering buying the full version, but if you guys let AVG make fun off you like this, I’m no longer interested…

4

@lrdalucard

We plan to add a “Network Security Monitor” mode in the future for people who prefer not to use our firewall functionality. Sorry for the problem.

If you give admin rights to an application on your PC then it can disable your firewall or do whatever it wants. AVG is a good product and if you prefer to use it and use GlassWire solely as a network monitor then that’s OK.

5

I’d disagree with your assessment on a few points.

I use GlassWire precisely because it does not create problems of the sort reported in this post. I’m sure that many users would like GlassWire to be more aggressive in ensuring that Windows Firewall is not turned off or can be turned on if it is off. But I’d be more likely to stop using AVG rather than GlassWire for the situation posted in this topic.

This is an primarily an issue for Windows Firewall

Microsoft has chosen to make turning off the Windows Firewall relatively easy for anti-malware applications. Windows assumes that the applications will reenable Windows Firewall to ensure that security is not compromised. That does not happen in this case and it is a problem even if you don’t run GlassWire.

AVG needs to improve

These sort of problems have not gone away with AVG 2016 and 2017 as users continue to have problems disabling the AVG firewall and reenabling the Windows firewall. This is disturbing because it appears that AVG do not make it easy to reenable the Windows firewall.
With AVG 2015, the subject of this topic, it was not sufficient to disable the AVG Firewall.because AVG also installs a filter driver which also had to be turned off as instructed here: https://support.avg.com/answers?id=906b0000000D3C6AAK

  1. Open Control Panel
  1. Open Network Sharing Center
  2. Click the link to “Local Area Connection” in the Connections area on the right
  3. Click Properties
  4. You should see in the list of items one called “AVG network filter driver” - if this has a tick, deselect it and then click OK
  5. The remaining windows and then turn the Firewall back on - hopefully this should work!

Users allow AVG to take over

Users of paid editions of AVG install it and give it permission to enable its own firewall and disable the Windows firewall. So it is not just a GlassWire issue if users allow it. Conversely, GlassWire could not reenable the Windows Firewall without users giving permission to remove AVG control.

Users of AVG free versions avoid this issue because the AVG Firewall is only available with the paid editions.