Antiviruses and Firewalls

It is absolutely essential that you have an antivirus and firewall installed.  There are many good ones available but we recommend the following:

• If you are using Windows 8, 8.1 or 10 then use the built-in Windows Defender .
• If you are using Windows 7, Windows Vista or Windows XP then use Microsoft Security Essentials .

We have found these to be the most reliable and least problematic.  In fact we use them ourselves.  It is also a lot easier for us to provide support if you are using an antivirus/firewall that we are familiar with.  In addition, the Panacea installer is able to configure your firewall automatically if you are using Windows firewall.

Panacea has many web based features which can trigger your antivirus into asking if you trust Panacea.  A window may pop up and ask you to choose to "allow" or "disallow" Panacea or Webworker to do something, e.g. access the internet.  You should always allow Panacea or Webworker to carry out their activities.  If there is an option to "allow always" or "remember" the setting to "allow" then this should be selected.  It is fairly tricky to re-enable programs once your antivirus has blocked them, so try to avoid having this happen.

Windows also has a firewall and below are examples of windows that might pop up:

Ensure that you allow Panacea and Webworker (and MySQL) to communicate on all networks and click the Allow Access button.