Klipsh...
Thanks for the reply. No I stopped the Comodo installation. I turned off PL when I had started it, but I left the installation on the screen at the first installation window and went to look for information on settings. That's when I noticed that Firefox couldn't connect to some sites. I did notice that the Windows firewall had become the default firewall, so PF was off. Also, however, the PF service was still running. I shut it down and the behavior persisted in Firefox, even with no visible traces of PL running. That's when I decided to close the waiting Comodo installation and see if I could find out what was going on.
I did not try a reboot with PF disabled. Are you saying that somehow PF may affect the performance of Windows firewall when PF is turned off? I haven't noticed that before, and I was kind of curious if maybe PF's control of the system was so engrained that the system just took longer than the time I allowed to completely digest the change (over to Windows firewall). I have shut down PF many times without this happening.
Do you mind sharing which leak test you tried? It does pass the Gibson test for me. I sought one time to verify the Matousec tests and downloaded the test payloads. I got exactly the same results, but I admit it was disappointing to me. This was quite some time ago and only now was I getting around to working with Comodo firewall. I tried it a few months ago and have tried it many times over the years, just kind of monitoring progress, but it's always seemed jumbled to me.
As it is, I run PF in the mode to show pop ups for everything it monitors, and I basically/mostly always approve them or reject them the one time. In this way, there aren't hoards of processes and connections with rules for me to try to keep up with, but it is a cumbersome existence. I don't mind, I mean I get pop ups when some things open or run, but this method avoids the potential problem of blanket approval of a behavior for an entire program, especially Windows services. I pay special attention to clipboard monitoring and potential keylogging.
I haven't ever determined for certain if PF IDs programs using a Windows service like svchost to connect to the net as the program or as svchost. This nags me to no end, but I did read at one point that the Gibson test is supposed to validate that PF does ID connections as the program and not the host service being used to connect. That was supposedly the crux of the problem with many firewalls according to Gibson as I read on his site.
Whenever I have removed Private Firewall in the past, I have always used Comodo Programs Manager. I install CPM right after updates with a new installation of Windows. It seems to get all of PF every time I have removed it before.
I may sound like I know alot idk, but mostly I guess alot of this has been bottled up with me not having time to dive into Comodo. Where would I look in Windows for "network card"?
BTW, do you find Comodo Firewall's interface and settings clumsy and fragmented? I can't seem to get to the bottom of Comodo's use of language with their settings. It took me awhile to get used to PF, but I feel like I have it more or less down now. There are still some things that I'm not sure about, but I have the manual, which helps and has helped somewhat...