I seem to have a hidden firewall that is preventing me from getting to the internet. I have turned off the WinXP firewall and uninstalled Norton Internet Security to no avail. My Motorola Surfboard modem is receiving an IP address from roadrunner and passing it to my PC but something is blocking my access. I cannot ping anything either. Any ideas? Dred

yeah... well that could be almost anything, huh? So I have a list of questions that could at least help narrow the suspects if you are still wanting help: 1) At some time did you have successful access? or is this a new connection? 2) Have you had any instance of an installed program/virus/spyware since the loss of connection (assuming it wasn't new) 3) Have you scanned for any virus/spyware that maybe on your system without your knowledge. 4) Have you verified that processes of Norton Internet Security aren't still running even after uninstalling? (which I have seen happen) 5) Assuming that "roadrunner" is the name of a broadband service (which I believe that it is), have you tried power cycling your Modem. Turning it off for about 5 minutes and re-starting it. It may be that you lost a lease on an IP address and your modem is not acquiring a new one correctly preventing you from getting network access (also has happened to me before) 6) Have you tried other ports/protocals/ applications for netowkr access (ie. Telnet, Tracert, Messenger, etc.). 7) Are there any additional details you can provide as to what you may think might have caused the loss of access? Anyway, well I would love to help, but there is too much that could be the problem without knowing more details which is why I am sure you haven't had any posts on this yet, but let me know and I will do what I can to help. - Michael

In answer to your questions... 1) At some time did you have successful access? or is this a new connection? Yes, 3 days ago, everything was working fine. Been working for over a year with no problems. 2) Have you had any instance of an installed program/virus/spyware since the loss of connection (assuming it wasn't new) Nothing new that I am aware of has been installed. My wife was working on it but does not remember installing anything. My 14 year old son was on it but not on the internet. 3) Have you scanned for any virus/spyware that maybe on your system without your knowledge. I did complete scans with Nortan Internet Security, SpyBot and Spysweeper. Just the usual adware stuff that was supposedly deleted. 4) Have you verified that processes of Norton Internet Security aren't still running even after uninstalling? (which I have seen happen) I have checked the services in msconfig and no instances that I can detect. 5) Assuming that "roadrunner" is the name of a broadband service (which I believe that it is), have you tried power cycling your Modem. Turning it off for about 5 minutes and re-starting it. It may be that you lost a lease on an IP address and your modem is not acquiring a new one correctly preventing you from getting network access (also has happened to me before) I did power down and recycle. I have also hooked it up to a DSL modem on another network with same results. 6) Have you tried other ports/protocals/ applications for netowkr access (ie. Telnet, Tracert, Messenger, etc.). Yes, I have tried remote terminal services and messenger to no avail. 7) Are there any additional details you can provide as to what you may think might have caused the loss of access? Can't think of anything else at this time. Been on the horn with both Symantec customer support and Roadrunner, both seem to belive there is another firewall running somewhere but I have not installed one and cannot find any. Does anyone know how to detect another firewall? Thanks for your time and help. Dred

there's no Firewall Hunting program that I know of other than some good manual effort of reviewing the processes in task manager and making sure that you verify each one as a valid service. ALso have you tried booting into Safe Mode w/ Netowrking to see if that enables your network access?

I did try booting in safemode with networking and still received same results. I did notice that MS updates installed the following hotfixes on 12/16/04... KB873339 KB885835 KB885836 KB886185 I tried uninstalling these to see if any were the culprit but did not have any change in results. Dred

did you, or even dare you (should I say) do a system restore back a couple days to when it was working... also could you post a list of your system processes so I can see what you have running currently on your system? You can use Hijack this program or in XP run Tasklist in the Command window and funnel the results to a log file. Thanks

The following are the processes currently running: taskmgr.exe NotifyAlert.exe Support.exe explorer.exe userinit.exe svchost.exe svchost.exe lsass.exe services.exe winlogon.exe csrss.exe smss.exe System System Idle Process Thankks again for your help. Dred