Re: Windows XP, "HTTP and FTP shut off"

Another thought, since this is a PC: A lot of times people will have 2 or 3 different firewall programs installed on their PCs. Every security (i.e. anti-virus) software seems to come with it's own firewall.

When I'm troubleshooting stuff like this, I often find that Windows built-in firewall is set up properly, but that a user had installed some internet security suite in the past (and perhaps stopped using it and forgot all about it) and it included another firewall that's blocking access.

Another common error is forgetting to set up the default gateway. I've run into several situations where the user says "telnet works, but HTTP doesn't" and when I look at it, I learn that telnet only works to hosts in the same subnet, and HTTP also works to those same hosts, and neither works outside the subnet. But, the user didn't realize this because they only use telnet for local machines, and only use HTTP for Internet, and therefore had the mistaken impression that telnet worked and HTTP didn't. All they needed was to have the default gateway set up properly.

Once, I ran into a user who had created the same symptom by setting up the netmask wrong. (For some reason, they decided to use 100.0.0.0 as their netmask -- you can imagine how that'd foul up routing...


Jones, John (US) wrote:

If you can telnet and ping from that machine to others then your network
connection is fine. There is a block on HTTP connection. My first
thought, since you've disabled the firewall, is to double-check your DNS
settings. My second thought is to run anti-virus and anti-spyware
scans.