logging on problems

[mark]

Very happy with myself building my own pc im having problems with msn messenger im logged in explorer go to sign in messenger and it says cannot connect you are behind a firewall.what am i doing wrong?

[Spider_man]

Do you have a Firewall installed on your new PC? What OS are you running? Because I Have XP and there is a Firewall that can be setup through windows and that could be your problem.

[mark]

i am running windows me with norton personal firewall.
dont relly understand it all yet but getting this up and runnig would be a great help.

[Jeff]

Does it work when you turn off the firewall?

[mark]

how do you turn the firewall off?

[Spider_man]

Its probably different for every firewall so try reading the directions that came with your Firewall, or try searching this site for somebody with the same firewall.

[Jeff]

You might check your firewall's online help. Or this article titled How to temporarily disable a firewall rule might help (from the Norton knowledgebase).

[mark]

Excellent ive disabled the firewall and it works!
so what use is the firewall if its disabled?How do i get it to work with the firewall on/
Its a norton personnel firewall.

[Jeff]

Firewalls generally use rules to control what applications are permitted to communicate through the Internet and which ones are not. This is designed to protect you and to make you aware of applications that send and receive information over the net. Most firewalls I'm aware of, including Norton, will allow you to permit a specific application (such as MSN Messenger) to access the Internet, while the firewall is still running, protecting you from other types of traffic.

In simple terms, just because you've permitted MSN Messenger to run through the firewall, your firewall is still serving a purpose, and if you followed the instructions in my previous link, the firewall is actually still "on." All you've really done is told your firewall that it's ok for MSN Messenger to access the Internet.

[mark]

Excellent all up and running
thankyou for your help.
no doubt i will be back with more problems.