yeah could get into modem after switching off. Still no luck with finding the firewall though. I did use etomi for a few years and then all of a sudden the same thing was happening with etomi- no searches would come up obviously from a firewall. I still have etomi installed but thought i would give LW a go thinking that there was a problem with my etomi subscription. This only became a problem last week and im pretty sure when i installed etomi 3 years ago i had to block the firewall on the modem????? any other suggestions would be great coz im at a loss????
thanks for your help.......

do you know if norton ghost contains a firewall that might be causing this??

I don't use Norton, but AFAIK Ghost doesn't have a firewall...it's just for backing up/restoring. Were there any changes in hardware or software (updating, upgrading, install new software) around the time that you started seeing the firewall?

If there's no firewall coming from software, I'd still be looking at the modem for the source of the firewall.

Have you tried resetting the modem (stick a paper clip/pen into the little hole at the back of the modem...the manual explains this more)? This would reset things back to factory defaults, so you'd have to go right back through & set up your Westnet connection again & also re-do port forwarding.

Or maybe somebody else here has some more ideas???