Windows Firewall & Blocking Programs

Hi Guys,

My old man has an old system running XP, and he cannot use a 3RD party firewall solution due to the very touchy programs he uses for his amatuer radio programs for BBS, Satelite stuff, and other such boring stuff...

Anyway, I installed a game for my mother to play, but it keeps acessing the innernet, and I went into windows firewall but its not listed with permission, but it isnt even coming up to request deny/approval rights, it just does it..

How can we overcome this, becuase when the game goes to connect to the net on startup, it bogs the system down for a while which they find rather annoying.

Sincearly,

Dave

 

As far as i know Luthius, Windows XP firewall does not allow you to monitor outbound connections...only incoming!
This is why many view the application as inadequate, as far as software firewalls go!
Maybe a solution for your dad could exist in the form of a hardware firewall? (ie router or such).

Regards...

 

Hi Nitecrawler,

I am sure it does, I think its the opposite of what you said, um, I am not sure, I use ZoneAlarm myself, will be choosing another shortly.. But I`ve been burnt too many times to count, and learnt never to use the startard firewall package!

When I first installed their OS, all the programs would come up saying 'bbs.exe is trying to access the internet, Allow - Block".. But it isnt coming up asking that for the games exe file, but it isnt in the 'Exceptions' list either...

Hmmm dunno, may just have to kill the game altogether!

Thanks,

Davo

 

The reason for not using a 3rd party firewall isn't really valid, any decent software firewall can be configured to allow specific connections, ports and other rules to allow certain programs to work.

A hardware firewall such as one found on a router doesn't really do much in the way of blocking programs from accessing the internet either and certainly won't pop up alerts to ask whether to allow access. However a router may be able to be configured to block access to a certain site.

You do still have a couple of options:

Hve you looked in the game settings to see if there is an option to turn off this behaviour ?

Do you know what site/domain/ip the game is connecting to? You might be able to block it from the internet if it is accessing via a domain name directing the dns lookup to 127.0.0.1.