Dan: “at each startup/restart, Privatefirewall (on its own untouchably set autorun) would cause a long blackish-screen hang between “Starting Windows” and LogIn screen”

So your solution was to remove Privatefirewall from startup ? How is the situation now ?

In Feb 2015, I installed PrivateFW 7.0.30.3 (latest-available version, released in Dec 2013) for the first time. But upon reboot & login, I kept getting a black screen with just a mouse pointer.

Task Manager (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC) indicated that kernel.sys was hogging 25% of the CPU, while the majority of system processes were not even loaded. (The Task Manager listed very few processes, even less than in Safe Mode). Furthermore, there are no 3rd-party software that start up with my system, so it can’t have been conflict with these.

Repeated reboots resulted in the same black screen immediately after login. The “solution” is to boot into Safe Mode (… apparently PrivateFW does not start up with Windows in Safe Mode, Task Manager listed 0 PrivateFW processes), upon which I performed System Restore. My OS is the same as yours: Win 7 SP1 Home Premium (64-bit).

Incidentally, Privatefirewall seems quite famous for causing a black screen at start (or login after logout) for many Windows 7/8 users since 2011/12. Some of them are Avast Antivirus users, but I have never installed Avast. In fact, when I installed PrivateFW, my system had no antivirus program because I’d cleanly uninstalled the previous one & rebooted a few times, before installing PrivateFW.

Until now, PrivateFW;s developer has neither resolved this, nor mentioned this issue at the Support page. Moreover, this “highly recommended” firewall has received hardly any
updates as of Jun 2012. There were 2 minor updates in 2013, & none since
then.

I am keen to try Privatefirewall, but considering the lack of updates & the numerous black-screen complaints(totally left unaddressed by the developer), my reservations are not unjustified. In comparison, I have not encountered similar black-screen problem with Comodo Firewall or ZoneAlarm Firewall.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?p=1843778

“my computer would black screen after a minute but uninstalling private firewall fixed it”

http://www.sevenforums.com/system-security/180820-private-firewall-install-bsod.html

Windows 7: Private Firewall, install BSOD

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/privatefirewall-v7-0-28-1-released-today.325287/page-5#post-2097866

User A: “Installed it rebooted, and that was it! the whole system froze stone cold with just a blank GUI on my desktop”
User B: “so many people on this site praise this [PrivateFW], but I also had weird effects right after installing”

https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=143809.0

Avast Free + PrivateFirewall= black screen at start
User A: “your desktop screen remain black and you can only force restart 2 or 3
times untill desktop is showed. Sometimes screen is black but you can
see mouse arrow”
User B:Same problem here. Don’t have to reboot, just Ctrl-Alt-Del, logout and then login again [to get black screen]”

There are a very few types of malware Privatewall doesn’t protect against, but most competent AVs do; also, one needs a good antilogger (such as Zemana) as this FW doesn’t faze loggers. For those interested, my Privatefirewall on highest settings itself alone scores 290/330 current Comodo Leak Test…almost twice what my resident Windows firewall scored. Hope this is of use to at least some windows users.

Comodo firewall is the bomb, very light on the system not a resource hog and runs great with Eset Av. Defo the best.