[milkman dan]

???? every XP instalation I have ever done has booted for the first time with XP's firewall already enabled :? XP's firewall doesn't patch up any of the RPC holes anyways, so I don't see what difference it would really make. My best suggestion is throw SP1 on a CD, then patch up to at least sp1 before plugging into the internet. Oh, and the 240 megs not being much, well, no, it really isnt (ive got 2 gigs in my box), but to play a DVD in XP, 128 megs is more then enough for a system that isn't bogged down with adware or a virus. DVD playback doesn't much in the way of RAM, and doesn't use any space from the swapfile that I am aware of, even if you are really short on ram. Heh, one more option we are forgetting, is there could be a scratch on the DVD, or his lens could need cleaning

[milkman dan]

???? every XP instalation I have ever done has booted for the first time with XP's firewall already enabled :? XP's firewall doesn't patch up any of the RPC holes anyways, so I don't see what difference it would really make. My best suggestion is throw SP1 on a CD, then patch up to at least sp1 before plugging into the internet. Oh, and the 240 megs not being much, well, no, it really isnt (ive got 2 gigs in my box), but to play a DVD in XP, 128 megs is more then enough for a system that isn't bogged down with adware or a virus. DVD playback doesn't much in the way of RAM, and doesn't use any space from the swapfile that I am aware of, even if you are really short on ram. Heh, one more option we are forgetting, is there could be a scratch on the DVD, or his lens could need cleaning

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by milkman dan

???? every XP instalation I have ever done has booted for the first time with XP's firewall already enabled

Interesting....every install I've seen/heard of hasn't had it activated. I wonder why you're seeing it and I'm not? Hmm.

[Janak Parekh]

Originally Posted by milkman dan

???? every XP instalation I have ever done has booted for the first time with XP's firewall already enabled :?

I've done about 10-15 in the last month, fresh installs from CD, and it absolutely did not. I don't know what kind of XP install you're using, but it's not the standard one as far as I can tell.

XP's firewall doesn't patch up any of the RPC holes anyways, so I don't see what difference it would really make.

It prevents outside connections to the RPC ports. I can tell you with 100% certainty that if you throw a ICF-enabled XP box on the Internet, it won't get hacked by a worm. (IE vulnerabilities are an issue, on the other hand, so the ICF is useful to enable you to run Windows Update.) Perhaps you're thinking of a different firewall, because the one built into XP certainly does what it advertises.

My best suggestion is throw SP1 on a CD, then patch up to at least sp1 before plugging into the internet.

This is no longer sufficient. There are patches post-SP1 that must be installed to avoid the latest worms.

Oh, and the 240 megs not being much, well, no, it really isnt (ive got 2 gigs in my box), but to play a DVD in XP, 128 megs is more then enough for a system that isn't bogged down with adware or a virus.

... or most anything running in startup. If one is comfortable enough, running "msconfig" is a useful debugging step.

--janak

[milkman dan]

wow, that is insane. I have onstalled 90% of my XP instalations from an oem preinstall, which could account for 90% of the systems, but one of the first things I do on a personal machine after loading a system on XP is disable the firewall. As far as xp's firewall blocking the RPC ports, I don't understand that becuase last time I reloaded my main PC I got blaster half way through downloading sp1 while the firewall was enabled

[Janak Parekh]

Originally Posted by milkman dan

wow, that is insane. I have onstalled 90% of my XP instalations from an oem preinstall, which could account for 90% of the systems, but one of the first things I do on a personal machine after loading a system on XP is disable the firewall. As far as xp's firewall blocking the RPC ports, I don't understand that becuase last time I reloaded my main PC I got blaster half way through downloading sp1 while the firewall was enabled

Something is very wrong with your setup, then. It sounds like the firewall is off, but "checked" anyway... or something. We literally just reinstalled a bunch of Dells here, and firewalled each of them, plugged them in (public IP network), and off they went to Windows Update with nary a Blaster infection. My boss was the only one who forgot when she was installing a PC of hers, and it was promptly infected.

(FWIW, this was not an OEM install -- we blew those away and used our own XP Volume License.)

--janak

[milkman dan]

in the words of beavis....
"well I'll be damned"