XP personal firewall questions

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 10:09 am

So I have had a licenese for XP since it's release, but never loaded it as I never had a need. My dying machine finally frustrated me into picking up a new case, mobo, ram, and processor last weekend; so I figured I'd load XP Pro....

Anyhoo I have Wowway a form of cable modem, which assigns multiple IPs by MAC address, no home router needed for multiple machines, just a switched hub. I get XP up and running after having to reboot my modem to get it to assign an IP to my new machine. I proceed to get all of the XP updates through SP2 and forward.

Now machine will get online right as start it. It will briefly get online if I reboot the cable modem. However, as long as I leave the MS personal firewall up the connection drops and the IP won't renew. As MS becomes increasingly macified, I don't seem to be able to do anything with personal firewall except shut it off. Given MS's propensity for vulnerablity I am pretty certain this is a bad idea. What gives. My podmate suggests that this is not the norm and that a virus might have tracked me downloading SP2 and infected my machine during the download.

Does that sound realistic? Anyone else have any similar experiences? I might find myself calling Wowway tonight, but historically I find level one support to be a way to spend several hours on the phone with someone telling about crap I already know and sending me on whild goose chases becuase they don't know how to search their own databases because they don't actually understand the technology they are providing support for.

JSHAW · Post by **JSHAW** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 12:14 pm

So if I'm reading your post correctly your pc has an intermittent connection to your cable modem? Is there any point that you have a constant connection?

One thing I'd try before going any further is taking out your current ethernet card and try another one, just to check and see if you have a problem with the nic card. Just a suggestion.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 12:33 pm

The connection appears to be software related. The connection is stable as long as I don't have XP's personal firewall turned on.

JSHAW · Post by **JSHAW** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 1:24 pm

I have a Linksys 4 port router, BEFSR41 with updated firmware installed and configured correctly.

The way I look at the SP2 firewall is that it adds to my current firewall protection, which was doing just great BEFORE SP2 was released.

If you have a router, and have it configured properly then I really wouldn't sweat Microsoft's personal firewall not being "on".

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 1:55 pm

No router. As Wowway assigns multiple IPs from the modem, I used as a Linksys switched hub. I have a router, but I like the idea of having real IPs for all machines connected to the internet.