Expert: Corey Bryant - 1/23/2005

Question
I hope you can help.  I've tried everything I can think of, without success.

I simply cannot get resident programs on my computer to communicate with their particular ‘parent' programs via the internet.  For example, Norton cannot connect to LiveUpdate, Windows Media Player cannot connect so as to provide licenses for newly downloaded tunes, and TaxCut cannot connect to provide updates.  My email and Explorer run just fine, and can both send and receive perfectly.  Just stand-alone resident programs can't talk across the net.

I am running Windows XP, using Explorer as my browser.  I've installed Service Pak 2, but have disabled the firewall.  I have disabled my isp's accelerator.  I run Norton Anti-virus 2005, which, as I understand it, has no firewall.  I tried installing Netscape 7.1, but it could not connect either, so I uninstalled it.

I'm at my wits' end.  Can you help, please?

Jim McGue  
jmcgue@highstream.net  

Answer
So you can connect to websites (apparently).  

Do you have any other type of firewall (like ZoneAlarm) installed?  Do you go thru a router to get to the internet?  If so, try to connect directly to internet.  

Do you know a website (i.e. live.download.norton.com) that one of the programs is trying to connect to?  If so - can you ping that one? (go to Start - Run, type in CMD and <ENTER>.  Now at the DOS prompt, type in ping www.example.com <ENTER>. (replace www.example.com with the correct URL).   Do you get a lot of IP addresses, and times?

-Corey