Windows XP Networking, Firewall, Cognex Cameras something...

[Chris Elston]

I need some help. I've hit a brick wall with some TCP/IP crap... I've got a Dell XPS 400 machine I am trying to connect to an FTP server I setup. On the Dell machine, the ip address is 192.168.3.4. I am running my FTP server "FileZilla Server" on port 2121. On the same machine, I installed FileZilla FTP client, and I can connect to the FTP server just fine and login, because the Client is installed on the same PC that is running the SERVER. Two days ago, I configured my Cognex cameras to FTP bad images to the FileZilla server running on the Dell XPS machine. Everything was working fine. Everytime I got a bad image, it would connect to the XPS machine and transfer the bad image. Now, after the PC rebooted, something has changed and I can't figure out what the problem is. I've disable the Windows XP firewall. I've got my laptop connected to the same switch, it's an industrial switch on IP address 192.168.3.100. I can not PING the Dell XPS machine from my laptop to this machine, but I can PING my Cognex camera, who's address is 192.168.3.11. I can run a NETSCAN "network snoop" software and I can see my Cognex camera, and my own machine. But I can not see the Dell XPS 400 machine. It's completely hidden itself on the network. If I am on the Dell XPS 400 machine, I can ping the Cognex camera, and my machine just fine and itself. I also started an FTP server on my laptop, and I can start an FTP client on the DEll XPS and it will connect to my laptop FTP server. So it's allowing traffic OUTBOUND on port 2121 but not INBOUND anymore.... So I assume that there is some firewall or another setting I can't find in the Dell XPS 400 machine that is blocking FTP traffic on port 21 or 2121 (I changed it to port 2121) neither port works anymore. It did two days ago.... I can't even ping the Dell machine. The Windows XP firewall is DISABLED. I went into Advance mode, and check the box "allow echo requests", and that doesn't seem to work either... The Dell machine is not connected to a domain controller, it's a stand alone unit. I turned on File and Printer sharing. I doubt that matters. I am totally blocked and there is not other service running that I can see such as Norton, or any other firewall. Does anyone have any other suggestions? I assume if I figure out how to ping the Dell XPS 400 from my laptop, that the FTP service from the Cognex camera will resume operations. The switch I have installed is an unmanaged industrial switch so there is nothing to configure in the switch. Any Windows XP secuirty brainy acks? What have I done to lock myself out? I don't remember changing any settings after the machine rebootes yesterday...

[Ken Moore]

Double check the firewall, I've had cases where the firewall restarted at every boot. You can also edit the firewall settings from the registry, goto: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Parame ters\FirewallPolicy\StandardProfile There you can change all firewall settings, including enabling and disabling the entire firewall and setting a certain executable as an exception to the firewall, setting ports and IPs. May not help, but worth trying. You can also run this for a cmd prompt: netstat -an It will show all open connections in TCP and UDP.

[Chris Elston]

I ended up figuring this out. I found a McAfee Personal Firewall service running on this PC. MCAfee was uninstalled on this PC and everything was suppose to be disabled. I couldn't find it or see it in the run time list, but I kept digging, and digging and finaly saw it near the registery entry that Ken pointed out. Thanks for getting me CLOSE to where I needed to be!....After I found that I double checked the services control panel, and sure enough a service for personal firewall was check to start automatically was ticked. I disabled it and now I am good to go...So the lesson to be learned here is: I never have thought much of the McAfee products, and when you uninstall them, they aren't really uninstalled....Cameras are saving bad images once again...BTY: FileZilla FTP server is sweet...and it's free.

[Ken Moore]

Well sorry I couldn't help more, but I'm glad you got it up and running. Sometimes Windows is down right scary, there is so much crap running that's hard to separate the wheat from the chafe.

[TimWilborne]

So that location would show any firewall running on the computer?

[Ken Moore]

Once you get to this point, you can see all the services on the machine, sometimes the titles are cryptic, and sometimes they are pretty clear. I have the standard MS firewall that's disabled, and another that I use. The windows firewall shows up as noted in my previous post, but the second one also show up as a listing under services.

[TimWilborne]

That's true they would be services

[Nathan]

Probably would be a service, but doesn't have to be. The next logical troubleshooting step would be to kill processes and testing to see if you can communicate over that port (similar to Kens idea of stopping services). You can use a port scanner to detect processes listening over ports. You were looking for more of a "reverse scan" of some sort. I can think of how it would be implemented running on your computer and another on the network, but I've never heard of a utility designed to do that. It could exist as some kind of "firewall tester" or "port scanner" variant.