Newbie Firewall Question (XP)

Hey all--

I've been having trouble connecting to a friend online when playing online games. We both run windows XP when we play this, and basically what I was wondering was whether or not a built in firewall in the operating system might be the problem. My friend and I agree that it could be a possibility but when I read the XP booklet, it said nothing of it (or I overlooked it)? So here's my overall question... Does XP have an inbuilt firewall that could be causing connection problems relating to this situation? If so then how do I disable it? I also run ZoneAlarm but I know how take that one off. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

--Peace :cool:

Yes, XP does have a built in firewall. I recently disabled mine.

Here is a link that will tell you how to do it. Disable XP Firewall

Hope this helps.

since you both have winxp which does have a built in firewall, you really only need one of you to disable it or the other, most firewall problems are caused when both people trying to connect have a firewall enabled, one will block the other sometimes, but not all the time, my network had me stumped for over a month with this problem, i just forgot that could be the cause

i hope this helps you in turning off your firewall on XP

Some installation of Windows XP have a firewall pre-installed. This prevents Win-Hand and all computers on the Internet to see or connect to those computers. So Win-Hand requires your windows XP's firewall to be turned off.

This can be accomplished by following these steps:
You must be log to your computer using an Administrator logging name to complete this procedure.


Open your Network Connections: click Start, click Control Panel, click Network and Internet Connections, and then click Network Connections.

Click to highlight the Connection you use to connect to the Internet, and then click on Change settings of this connection.
Click on OK, and then close the Network Connections window.

If you have broadband service and are behind a router, your firewall is most likely not to blame.

When you have more than one node (access point) "behind" one ip address, uninitiated requests (like if you were hosting a game) need to be configured to be forwarded to the computer you are playing the game on.

Google for the specific game's port usage and configure your firewall to route all unitiated requests on that port to the local ip address of the computer mentioned if this is the case.