Windows 7: Training Comodo's firewall, what are best practices?

I have just installed Comodo's free firewall with all recommended settings. I read an article a while back that said firewalls like these and HIPS in general are not very effective for noob users because they just end up allowing everything through the firewall instead of reading all those little alerts.

I would like to know how I can go about properly training my firewall. Thank you for your time

read those alerts!

look in the program's HELP section

and post questions in the Comodo forum:

Comodo Internet Security - CIS

thank you, tman, solved

The simplest way to train the Comodo Firewall is to set it to Custom Policy Mode and it will notify you every time a program that does not have tries to access the internet and it will carry out your wishes concerning each program. It was shocking to me just how many programs try to access the internet and phone home...

~Maxx~

thank you as well, Maxxwire, custom policy mode is working out great

I'm glad that Custom Policy Mode is working out for you. The Comodo Firewall has taught me a lot about how my Win 7 x64 computer works. For example I never knew that newdev.dll called Redmond when I plugged in a USB device, but now I have the Comodo Firewall set to block and log the attempt because I just don't see why MS needs to know about it every time I plug a thumb drive into my computer.

~Maxx~

On a new computer or fresh install i used clean mode. On a not so new computer i used learning mode with D+ sandbox on block

ty for the advice, but i don't use the Defense+ HIPS, i just use the firewall

Good advice for setting up Comodo Proactive Defense+. I like to follow up by setting the Firewall in Custom Policy Mode so that it will stop any program attempting to access the internet which does not have permission.

~Maxx~