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"Norton Firewall"

Ack! I *hate* firewall.

I have Norton Firewall 2003. Not sure what time this happened so I have no idea whether people have been snooping around my PC and planting trojans or something.

Until today, I can't seem to enable the firewall. It has disappeared from my taskbar and can't get it back. The program opens up fine but I have no choice of enabling/disabling it. The same with Intrusion Detection, Privacy Control and Ad Blocking. They're all switched off and can't get them back on.

There are 3 accounts on my computer, mine, mum and her boyfriend. My mum is the administrator. Which I wanna change, but can't. So seeing as I am not, I can't change any of the options unless I log into her account, which is a pain. But everything is fine in her user account. The firewall icon is in the taskbar and can change the settings, like Enable/Disable.

Was just confused why none of this is working in my account.

Recently had a virus too, which I will find the name of in a moment if that is important. Wasn't sure if that had anything to do with it.

Anyone know what might be the problem?
Thank you :)

I had to disable windows messenger, i suppose i could have configured the firewall to block the port? But its not like i use it anyways.

This has annoyed me. Today when I got back, turned on computer. It appeared again, just like that! It's a little weird how it can just disappear then reappear two days later. Nobody has played around with the settings but me, even then, it didn't work.
Now all is back to normal without doing anything..!

Thanks for your help everyone :)

Not all versions of Windows run the Messenger Service. To stop them on XP right click My Computer > Manage > Services+Apps > Services find Messenger and STOP the service and change startup to manual = No more messenger popups! You don't need a firewall to control this.
Doing this will only cause a problem if you are on a LAN and use the messenger service to send messages to the different workstations (as MM said).
GWD.

Eh I never got those when my connection went through Windows, and my mum doesn't at the moment either.

Turbonutter wrote:
> Don or?ega wrote:
> firewalls do stop them annoying pop up messages though. Well thats
> the
> main reason i use it!
>
> Lies, your particular firewall just has a popup blocker function.
> JavaScript causes annoying popups.


He means the messages that come through the Windows Messenger service, which firewalls block (although this will screw you over on a LAN :O)

Don or†ega wrote:
> firewalls do stop them annoying pop up messages though. Well thats the
> main reason i use it!

Lies, your particular firewall just has a popup blocker function. JavaScript causes annoying popups.

To answer MsNYs original question, it's possible that because your account is not Administrator level, the firewall cannot perform normally. Firewalls are pretty low-level and need quite a lot of user privileges to run properly - if your user account is too restricted and the firewall is running as you and not SYSTEM, then that may be a cause of your problems. The only fix for this is either to use Windows XP's built-in firewall, or up your user account to administrator privileges.

Turbonutter wrote:
> If you're really that "concened" by your security the best
> idea is always to just stick a Linux or FreeBSD box in the way.


As I can well attest, a Linux/BSD machine is going to cause much less headaching than a copy of Zonealarm. Meanwhile on planet Earth...

What TBN says is pretty much true.

But i like to have the firewall there just in case. And as for Ms NY's problem, does the fact that an adminstrator account can change the firewall settings but you cant tell you something?

Its likely that the program is running in the background on your account, but you dont have the authority to change the settings.

firewalls do stop them annoying pop up messages though. Well thats the main reason i use it!