Had to uninstall it. Someone tried to hack into my computer.
Besides, it slowed my computer to a crawl.
Your paranoia has me really curious.
Someone tried to hack your computer? How do you know? And what makes you think Folding@home is related and/or makes you more vulnerable?
My computer had been at an all time low on speed since I downloaded it. That and my dad made me remove it.(It's a family computer.)
My firewall system would shut down randomly. Since I unintalled it, it stopped shuting down. Plus, my computer warned me that someone hacked in and tried to change all settings on the computer.(Luckly, my computer restored everything, so no data loss.)
Ah, then it wasn't really
your computer to begin with, in which case I'd suggest not installing anything unnecessary on it (mostly out of politeness). And really, you should only run something like Folding@Home when my computer is idle, not when people are using it. The idea is to make use of all that wasted time where your computer isn't doing anything useful.
As for the hacking attempt, it mostly sounds like a mixture of coincidence and paranoia with a few automated hacking tools scanning your computer for vulnerabilities and maybe taking advantage of your firewall being down. If Folding@Home really caused your firewall to malfunction, then I'd have to wonder about the quality of your firewall software, since if it were well-written then other programs shouldn't be crashing it.
In fact, you should be trying to reproduce the problem instead of just attributing it to one program and carelessly living in blissful ignorance of what could be a larger problem (i.e. your firewall is easy to crash and your computer is easy to hack without a firewall because it has outstanding vulnerabilities).
Also, if your firewall is application-based, I suggest switching to a rules based firewall -- preferably something fairly stable and good log analysis tools -- and learning how to write some strict rulesets with sane exceptions tailored to your family's usage of the Internet. You might consider installing and configuring Privoxy too, so you can filter out malicious website content, especially if you use a generic Windows/IE setup to browse the web.
Honestly though, the only way to have any sort of real computer security is to understand computer software and networking, but I doubt most people want to invest that much time into learning computer science theory, common network services with their implementations and related vulnerabilities, and a few programming languages when all they want is to use a computer... But if you don't, then your only option is to be extremely paranoid, and even then you'll never really be safe no matter how paranoid you are.
Here's what your situation is like: You have an electronic lock (firewall) that only locks when the lights are out (due to some twisted/faulty wiring in the lock device), but you brought a lamp (Folding@Home) into your living room where the lock is and left it on all the time. This caused your lock to never lock, so someone snuck in and tried stealing your TV.
Instead of getting rid of the lamp (maybe a good idea in your case though, since your family members like to sleep in the living room), you should focus on fixing the lock.
