Basically, to cut a stupidly long story short, I have a home network, with all four machines (including the server) running WindowsXP. (with SP1). Up until last week, it’s all been fine – the only firewall I ever needed to use was the one build into XP, and I have never had any trouble with it. Tests at grc.com showed the server to be quite safe from the outside world, with all ports that didn’t have a service running on them (I have an FTP on 21, Serv-U FTP, and Apache Web Server running off of 80) showing as “Stealth”. About a week ago, I started getting annoying “net send” pop-up adverts. “Weird,” I thought. “My firewall really should be blocking them out!” At the same time, I noticed that the rest of the network no longer had access to the internet. A quick check into the WinXP ICF showed that it had decided to open around 100 new ports, all for the “msmsgs” (Windows Messenger) executeable. I spent about 30 mins deleting them all, and then restarted the server. Upon going back into the firewall settings, I find that there are already 6 new ports opened for messenger, but that the internet was now working again on all networked PCs. As I was tired at the time, I decided to leave it for the time being and goto bed. A few hours later when I got up, I found that once again there was a list of around hundred ports open in the XP firewall for msmsgs, and that the internet connection sharing was once more not working, though the net was still working on the server. A quick trip to grc.com literally scared the crap out of me – not only was grc’s scan able to turn up the name of the server, but also the name of the LAN, the names of all my network shares, and the mac address of my ethernet card…my 139 (netbios) was wide open… showing anyone who cared to look everything that it was possible to show. Once again I removed all the entries from the firewall, and redid the scan, and all was fine, but the msmsgs ports started coming back again. A friend of mine claimed it had something to do with Dx9, so I reinstalled the latest version, removed the entries from the ICF, and restarted – only to find them coming back once more. At this point, I disabled the XP firewall and put ZoneAlarmPro onto the server, and uninstalled WindowsMessenger – but still, the ports are coming back, and after a while the network looses internet again until I delete all the open ports in the ICF, even when the ICF is turned off! Please tell me you have any idea at all what this, it has got me stupidly stumped! :( Thanks in advance...

You are probably getting popups from Messenger service. Have you tried disabling that service?It's not to be confused with the Instant Messenger program(Windows/MSN Messenger). Look in control panel>performance and maintenance>adminsitrative tools>services. There should be a service listed as "Messenger".There is an option to stop or restart that service. If you are looking for an excellent firewall that works on both incoming/outgoing traffic you might likeLooknStop. www.LooknStop.com/En. Hope this helps you, JB.

hi, i had that problem before, the problem i had was not probably setting up the TCP/IP on the network card.. try looking up your DSL ISP, they should provide the IP Address and Subnet Mask(if not, try IP:192.168.254.254 SubnetMask: 255.255.255.0) Note that u have to set this on your LAN card setting.. not the broadband, as the broadband(the place where u enter your user id & passwrod) should set to auto detect ip..

guh. do you ever get the feeling that no one understands you? ok, listen up :) i have no probs with telling the diff between MSN Messenger, Windows Messenger, and the Messenger service. my problem is, that the windows xp firewall, when switched on on the network connection that supplies my internet, gets lots and lots of new ports, to the tune of around 100, created for the app known as "msmsgs", which is Windows/MSN Messenger. Having all these ports getting opened, left me vunerable in the extreme to the outside world, and did in fact destroy my network by using just about every avail port for msmsgs. has anyone even heard of this? there are a few mentions of it around the web (even on this site, but a lot of the time people just ignore it and presume the person asking the question is talking about something else ;) trust me, we ain't...

I have never heard of this problem before. If you don't get answers here,you could check the forums at www.wilderssecurity.com and/or www.spywareinfo.com. Wish I could be of more assistance. JB.

yup i know what you're talking about - I got a similar problem with msmsgs.exe firstly, there is no reason on earth your firewall should stop, or be set up to stop, or even be mentioned in the same sentence as, a net send. Just disable the messenger service in control panel/administrative tools/services secondly, the ports thing. An application is opening the ports, stop the application opening the ports. You can't uninstall it effectively because of our wonderful friends at redmond, but you can replace it Go **download and install MSN Messenger 5.0 FIRST**, then go to ../program files/messenger/ and delete msmsgs.exe and everything else except the 2 dlls manually. The reason we do this is because, just like ie, windows messenger is set up to haunt your windows installation forever, coming back whether you want it or not. Remove the shortcuts from your start menu to avoid a mess. Restart and voila - no more bad messenger, just well behaved messenger :)

Thanks "thyadd"! I just noticed the same problem as "freakishkid". After monitoring it for a while, it turns out that Outlook Express (and probably Outlook too) attempt to launch msmsgs.exe every time they're started. And every time they open a few more ports >:(. I followed your instructions, got rid of msmsgs.exe and hooray, no more extra ports AND BONUS, Outlook Express starts immediately instead of trying to screw with the extra executable and port creation. Thanks again!