Southern Iowa's Leading Office Outfitters

                      • Home • Up • News • Services • Downloads • Tech Tips •             

Open ports in Windows XP Firewall

How to Open Ports in the Windows XP Internet Connection Firewall

After you turn on Internet Connection Firewall, some of your games and other programs may stop working as they should. How can you work around this?

To work correctly, some programs and games must receive information over the network. The information enters your computer through an inbound port. Your computer must have the correct inbound ports open so that the Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) can allow this information to pass through. The following is a list of applications and games that may require you to manually open the ports so that the programs can work correctly. Below the list, you'll find step-by-step instructions on how to manually open ports in Internet Connection Firewall.

In addition to the list above, to find the port numbers you need to open for a program, you can try the following resources:

Important Opening ports in ICF can create a security risk and leave your computer vulnerable. Only open ports when you absolutely need to.

To manually open ports in ICF:

1.	Click Start, click Control Panel, click Network and Internet Connections and then click Network Connections.   Click Network and Internet Connections     Click Network Connections
2.	If you have a dial-up Internet connection, under Dial-up, click the connection you use for the Internet. If you have a cable modem or digital subscriber line (DSL) connection, under LAN or High-Speed Internet, click the connection you use for the Internet.
3.	Under Network Tasks, click Change settings of this connection.   Select a connection
4.	On the Advanced tab, make sure that the check box Protect my computer and network by limiting or preventing access to this computer from the Internet is selected.
5.	Click Settings.   Click Settings
6.	On the Services tab, click Add.   On the Services tab, click Add
7.	In Description of service, type a name so that you can identify the port you want to open. For example: Windows Messenger file transfer. Type a name that will help you remember the service and the port. You can use any name that you want. The name does not have any effect on the functionality but is only to help you remember.
8.	In Name or IP address of the computer hosting this service on your network, type 127.0.0.1.
9.	In External Port number for this service and Internal Port number for this service, type the port number (the same number in both boxes). To find the port number, look at the list above, check the program's documentation, or one of the sources listed earlier in this article.
10.	Click either TCP or UDP, and then click OK.   Fill in Service Settings
11.	Repeat this process for each port that needs to be opened.

[ Back ] [ Home ] [ Up ] [ Next ]

Send mail to Webmaster with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2006 Bailey Office Equipment
Last modified: 07/21/08