WinXP SP2 Firewall Issues

[LordThing]

I work in a fairly fragmented environment. My users are scattered in little pockets throughout the US and canada. Also being a roofing company, they work with polymers and are scared of computers, let alone helping us work with them.

Anyway, normally as we are working with a person and they are having issues, we like to scan the ip subnet they are at and find their computer to just start remote controlling and help them along. This is aided if we get back the hostname/username/etc from a ping response. I often use Angry IPscan to find the computer and go from there.

Now with SP2, i have allowed through the ICMP EchoRequest and that allows the machines to be pinged, but none of that data (hostname, etc) is passed. What do I open up to allow this through? We think this is passed through NetBios, but I really dont want to open up the NetBios port since alot of virus traffic goes through there.

Any workarounds/fixes out there?

 

[spyordie007]

The firewall should allow you to only open up the netbios ports to a specific subnet (yours). When you setup the firewall exception make note of the "scope" button.

 

[LordThing]

I figured i could open up the port for the local subnet or range of ips, but it still doesn't help if a virus gets inside and starts creating havok. It's normally someone on the inside of our network/firewall that causes the most damage. I would love to keep that port closed as much as possible but still get that info.


I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Anyone know of the data I am talking about(in reguards to hostname/computer name/mac address in ping response)? Is this passed over Netbios?