Media for I am sick of windows firewall

I am sick of windows firewall

I had uninstalled zone alarm 6.1 free, and gone to xp firewall a week ago.

But, it seems I am more sick of windows firewall because programs keep on accessing net without having a mention in windows firewall. I am using Thunderbird, Firefox, Free download manager, hamster, and several such software that I see connecting to net. But, there is not mention of them in firewall window.

Zonealarm was at least having a mention of each program that was connecting to net. a "?" or "x" satisfied me that it won't connect to net automatically.

- it doesn't show anything. Zone alarm was at least showing the currently active programs which are accessing net.

- It has an ntp/utp option, and we have to define it in two separate entries if we want to give both accesses to same port. Why can't we define it in one go? And, za didn't have any mention of ntp/ udp.

- yesterday, bloody autoupdate downloaded some full 36 updates and I could not find any way of stopping that in windows firewall.

- It asked me just for two-three porgrams whether to block or allow. za wa at least asking me for every thing.

I am thinking about going back to za, but this time I will not go for 6.1 but for 4.5 free which I had been using for years.

Or, please suggest some good free firewall that has enough display to keep my curiosity quenched.

TIA.