I could really use a HELPING HAND....Im pretty desperate here...thanks!

[DarkFudge2000]

All of a sudden just this week, I cannot connect to gamespy arcade.....Morpheus or KAAZA. I cannot connect to any of my online game servers such as Jedi Knight Outcast, Quake Arena, ect....I can get my email thru Outlook express fine, travel the internet thru Explorer, and even download all the newsgroups with Free Agent but any gameing software that tries to access the net thru built in browser or just built in server querying fails with either "...cannot update master server..." or in Gamespy Arcade and Kaaza"....cannot display page error..."

I am running WIN XP Pro with an AThlon 1.4 connected with a NIC card to a Netgear Cable/Router 314 that is connected to an Optimum Online Cable modem.

Even when I try to Telnet now into the Netgear Router thru the command prompt in Windows XP , it fails stating the following error:


"Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\fudgebar>telnet 192.168.0.1
Connecting To 192.168.0.1...Could not open connection to the host, on port 23.
No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.


C:\Documents and Settings\fudgebar>


folks, I have never had a problem up until this week playing games online or downloading via Kaaza and Morpheus. I have my router connected to 3 machines in total and everything was working fine up until last and I have no idea what could have went wrong....where do I start looking to fix this problem....Is it a Router settings issue?...Is it a Win XP security issue that may have triggered something in one of the latest WIN XP hotfix updates???.......I have no idea what to do to get back with all the online games??...Explorer and Email work fine


Please help me or at least steer me in the right direction with some possible tests I can run to determine where the fault lies so I dont feel so lost....Im so confused and scared at this point


thank you so much....anyone

 

[jmagg]

192.168.0.1 is your router ip. Id say disconnect the router and see if you can connect. If so, reconfigure the router.

 

[Technonut]

Don't know if this has anything to do with it......(From HardOCP)

Thank you for your order, please pull forward.? GameSpy accidentally infected a crapload of people with a virus from their infected servers. <*OUCH*>. Visitors to the GameSpy site who downloaded the company's file exchange software GameSpy Arcade 1.09 during two hours on Tuesday and five hours Wednesday night could have downloaded the virus, said GameSpy chief executive Mark Surfas. Servers became infected during a routine clean-up and around 3,100 files are thought to be affected, Surfas said

 

[DarkFudge2000]

folks...thanks, I fixed it.....

I had ZOne ALarm but I just recently shut it off from starting up when I boot my system for fear of losing system resources and getting a bit slower performance so I think by doing that, it also prevented any of the software I mentioned from accessing the net. At first, I didnt think that would be the culprit because I thought if ZOne ALarm wasnt running, it would be involved in my internet's system security....Apparently, quite he opposite. I guess since I prevented it from loading on bootup, it also enabled some internet security measures on it's own

Once I reenabled ZOne Alarm and launched it...everything works fine now....I guess I would have to totally unistall ZOne Alarm completely to have all my software work with the net fine if I also dont want ZOne ALarm running.....I guess I can also just leave it running but I am very superstitious about PC performance when things are running in the background.

Is Zone Alarm a system slower or hog in any way?



thanks all for your help!