XP Firewall for Dummies?

[NaughtyNu 0]

I'm a child of Zone Alarm simply because it just asks if you want program so&so.exe to use the Internet or not. Everything else is taken care of.

 

I tried playing with the built in firewall with my first build and it was clear that I was missing a few steps. By turning it on my friend wasn't able to send me any files in ICQ and other problems arose that made me turn it off.

 

Since Zone Alarm crashes and burns horribly in XP (so far at least) is there any web pages or whatever explaining how to use this built in feature for the Non-Zone Alarm challenged?

[Corndawg1 0]

Try setting your preferences in ICQ to fix it

 

Preferences -> Connections -> Server Tab -> Proxy Settings

 

Using Firewall and not using proxy. Unless of course you know that you are using a proxy in which case enable using proxy.

[chucken 0]

it doesnt work for me either, even if I use the settings above. Also tried to open udp packets on port 4000 in the firewall with no luck

[NaughtyNu 0]

Well this config works with my ICQ and as far as I know everything else, although my mIRC is slow as hell now to log on

[Mooxooh 0]

Hey,

 

I had the same troubles with Zone Alarm and switched to the also free Tiny Personal Firewall. The Tiny Firewall works very similar as Zone Alarm, it just asks whether you want to allow internet access for a program or not but you can do some more configurations (e.g. allow only special ports for a program). I wouldn't use XP's built in firewall because... uhm, i just wouldn't

 

Have fun

 

Tiny URL: www.tinysoftware.com

[chucken 0]

well, icq works fine with the built in firewall but I can't send nor recieve files, "a direct connection could not be established". Hope you all understood that. SO, the usual thing to do is to open up the firewall for icq file transfer and the question is how ? As I'm writing this I just remembered that www.icq.com has a guide how to open up the firewall for file transfers, which ports to open etc.

So, NaughtyNu check out http://www.icq.com/icqtour/firewall/netadmin.html on how to open up the built-in firewall. Personally I don't like all those "simple" firewalls like tiny or zone alarm even if they are good. I don't feel I have total control over those plus zone alarm stopped my internet from working after a while though I'd done nothing wrong. But as I said, that's my personal opinion so don't listen to me.

[NaughtyNu 0]

If you're getting that "Cannot establish direct connections" problem in ICQ, it might not have anything to do with the Firewall...

 

Preferences, Security & Privacy, Ignore tab - there's a checkbox that's probably checked off saying "Do not allow Direct Connections with older versions of ICQ"

 

My friend was plagued with this one and his auto receive never worked. He unclicked it and everything is good again

[Corndawg1 0]

> Well this config works with my ICQ and as far as I know everything

> else, although my mIRC is slow as hell now to log on

 

Try punching a hole in your firewall at port 113 [ident service] see if that doesn't speed up your logging onto IRC servers.

[REDi 0]

doesn't icq use tcp/ip for file send/recieving? if so then you'll have to enable the ports for udp and tcp.. but maybe i'm jus talkin out my *** here. dunno. with my linux firewall setup .. i can send files but can't receive. .havent' played around with the settings yet.

[WAntilles 0]

Strange, because I've been using ZoneAlarm Pro with WinXP Pro 2535 for the last 4 days. It works flawlessly.