Question

CA Personal Firewall capfasem.exe hogging excessive CPU time

Asked by: exactjb

On my home computer, I am frustrated with the CPU time that my software firewall is taking. Using MS/Sysinternals Process Explorer, the capfasem.exe program seems to routinely take over 50% of the CPU time, drastically slowing my system.

Now to be fair, the system is a little elderly: PIII 1000, 1 GB Ram, XP Pro SP3

So the questions:
Is the CPU just too slow to expect anything better from this or any other software firewall?
Does this level of activity indicate that there is something wrong with the installation?
Is there a software firewall that will place less demand on the system?
Are there inexpensive hardware firewalls that will allow me to get rid of a software firewall completely?

Thanks,
John

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Asked On
2008-06-08 at 05:50:03ID23467156
Tags

CA

,

Personal Firewall

,

9.1.0.37

,

Excessive CPU Time

Topics

Consumer Firewalls

,

Networking Hardware Firewalls

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
4

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Answers

 

by: jojuezPosted on 2008-06-10 at 12:07:23ID: 21754048

Well, I have never really had any good experiences at all with windows based software firewalls. I myself have a fondness for smoothwall http://www.smoothwall.org/. It is an open source firewall. If you have a dated old system laying around, all you need to two NIC's and you can have a fully functional firewall separate and apart from your main system.
Also, does it always run that high or when you are doing something specific? You may have an application or something running that either needs an exception created or something that is running that should not be and needs to be removed. (spyware,virus,etc.)

 

by: Bassem_1Posted on 2008-06-22 at 01:18:46ID: 21840033

Try  disconnecting from internet then check the cpu usage ,then try uninstalling it
u can test zone alarm firewall they have  a free version and u can try the full version for 15 days
www.zonelabs.com

 

by: exactjbPosted on 2008-07-13 at 07:30:59ID: 31465124

After seeing your comment and doing some reseach, I realized that because I was behind a NAT router, this was really all the protection I needed. I have turned off the software firewalls and performance is much better.

 

by: exactjbPosted on 2008-07-13 at 07:31:59ID: 21992757

After seeing jojouez's comment and doing some reseach, I realized that because I was behind a NAT router, this was really all the protection I needed. I have turned off the software firewalls and performance is much better.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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