Having been forced to put XP into a couple of sites this week, I was not
surprised to find problems with them talking to the network ;)

One machine was a HP/Compaq that insisted in installing Norton Firewall
as part of it's 'customer support' package. Took the best part of an
hour to download every update even with a 1Mb ADSL! Having installed it,
I promptly switched it off so that I could access the machine, but no
joy I could ping OUT, but not IN. REMOVE Norton Firewall ( since the
ADSL router has one built in anyway ) and straight away pings in started
to work again.

The second machine was more fun, and had McAfee Firewall installed. It
was supplied by a third party for use back to their electronic
distribution system, but was to have the local stock database on it. I
installed the same ADSL router, and set up the machine to use it, but
all network activity locked solid. Removing the network allow at least
limited access to the machine, so again I switched off the Firewall -
and then I could plug in the network and ping out, but still could not
ping into the machine. So removed the firewall software completely -
everything works fine.

*SO* just because the firewall is switched off ....

This points out the need to check network set-up via 'ping' BOTH WAYS
before even trying to set up TCP/IP services like Firebird ;)
And if in doubt - remove the Firewall :)

--
Lester Caine
-----------------------------
L.S.Caine Electronic Services