Sorry to trouble you guys again, I understand my PC is an analy retentive ass hat and deserves to live on a scrap heap. But untill I get my laptop in September Im stuck with this piece of crud.

Okay, so first off MSN messenger wont sign in, for the past 2 days. It just says
"Sorry, Unable to sign you into Messenger at this time, please try again later. 80072efd".
Secondly, I use Limewire file sharing (www.limewire.com), and when I start the computer a get an error message saying something about it not being able to connect to the network because of a firewall.
I checked this out, and found that my Norton Internet Security has expired and needs to be activated again. However, I did have the Norton Firewall turned off I think. I then checked the Windows Firewall and it says...
"Settings cannot be displayed because Windows Firewall is not running...Do you want to run it? YES/NO"
I hit yes and it comes up with
"Windows cannot start the firewall/internet connection sharing".

Its got me dumbfounded-I obviously have an internet connection, cause I'm here. Hmm.
All I can think of is last week I ran through a series of clean up things, recomended in an article on the windows website, which involved de-activating things in MSConfig->Autorun/Startup. Next time I turned the mahcine on, it prompted me to change this back, so I changed it to what the mahcine reccomended. Could this be screwing with my PC?

Any help much appreciated:)

I solved the problem with viewing the Firewall stuff, but it still wont connect me to MSN or Limewire. It says I dont have an internet connection. Could it be something with restricting ports? I dont know how to change that if it is.

I solved the problem with viewing the Firewall stuff, but it still wont connect me to MSN or Limewire. It says I dont have an internet connection. Could it be something with restricting ports? I dont know how to change that if it is.


eeww! Norton Internet Security.

Can you get to secure websites? (PayPal, your Bank, Ebay?)

Have you tried re-installing Limewire?

Did you recently uninstall Norton, or try to uninstall it?

Yes Norton deserves to be shot into Space I know...

I could, the Internet was working fine.

Nope, since MSN was screwing arround too.

I have since:P


I actually fixed it by fiddling with the open ports in Internet Security, somehow everything is back as it should be now, which is nice.

It's most likely your firewall settings, one thing I've learned is that firewalls work a hell of alot better when you don't mess with them. I currently have Norton (Firewall and Internet Security), the windows firewall, and Microsoft Anti-Spyware Protection running (there all non-configured, I haven't messed with them once sense they've been installed). I can connect to both Limewire and MSN (I can also get on IRC, Trillian, Battle.net, and GameSpy Arcade with no problems).

I would recommend checking what ports MSN and Limewire run on, and then going into your firewall and making sure that it allows those ports.

Thats what I did, I went into internet Settings>Advanced Settings... and added all the Ports MSN uses, all 14 of them. Seemed to do the trick.

* Cruddyleper applauds

Nice work - I really didn't have a clue how to solve this.

Cruddy computers are not so bad once you get used to them. :p

It pissed me off too much by yesterday, so I found the System recovery disk and wiped everything from the PC to start again. Thank god!