I've read quite a few "can't connect" posts and non seem to apply to me.

I can't get BearShare or any other P2P or Torrent program to connect on my Win XP SP2 computer.

I have both a Win 98SE and the Win XP SP2 computer connected to a D-Link router on DSL. Both computers run ZoneAlarm firewall. ZoneAlarm on both computers is configured to allow the BearShare (and other P2P) connections. All programs work fine on the Win98SE computer but none work on the Win XP machine.

I've tried to make the connection directly to the DSL (w/o router) and still no go.

My problem must be something in Win XP. What is there in XP that i need to adjust?

Windows XP has a firewall of its own.

Go into the control panel and disable it (you shouldn't have two firewalls running simultaneously, as they can interfere with each other).

Hope this helps

Dano

I disabled the Windows firewall about 3 seconds after XP was installed. However, thanks for the suggestion.

Download BearDiag and run it on both machines, then zip up the reports and attach them to posts.

Thanks AaronWalkhouse,

Anyone who wades through all that info deserves a hero badge!!!

Here are the files:

By the way, I should also mention. BearShare (and other P2P progs) used to work on the Win XP computer before I upgraded to Win XP. Previously, I had Win 2000 operating on exactly the same DSL/Router configuration.

I recognize that BearDiag recommends a newer version of BearShare and a firewall other than ZoneAlarm. Given that my current version and ZoneAlarm are working on the Win98SE machine and used to work on this machine prior to WinXP, I'm assuming that they should work in some fashion on the WinXP machine. (I don't want to change too many things at once.)

Thanks in advance,
dss_cottage

Attached Files

	WinXP_BearDiag.zip (7.8 KB, 187 views)
	Win98SE_BearDiag.zip (7.0 KB, 57 views)

Looks like they are trying to use the same ports on both machines. In
Setup/Connection you can change one from 6346 to anything else. Then you
can adjust your firewall and router port forwarding to match the new port
number. The same goes for any of your other P2P software. Make sure each
has it's own unique port.

In freepeers.ini, try reversing the following option:
(Stop BearShare before you open the file or your changes will be lost.)
[Hosts]
bNativeCompletionPorts = Yes ; Use native completion ports for socket I/O

If these don't help, uninstall ZoneAlarm, reboot and test BearShare and your
other P2P software again. That company never really fixed that problem with
packet fragments arriving out of order and it got worse when XP came along.
BearShare and other P2P software have also been using UDP more and more
over the past couple of years which made ZoneAlarm's notorious weakness
stand out.

By the way. There have been so many advances between BearShare 4.5 and
5.1 that you really can't afford not to try the beta I posted. Some of those
advances are in low-level networking code specifically to accommodate XP,
especially SP2, which made a change in it's TCP networking driver to limit the
rate at which a program can open new connections. Since your copy of
BearShare is so old it appears likely that your other P2P apps also predate this
important change in the OS. Kazaa definitely never survived long enough to
make the change. Update all of your P2P apps if you can and if there is still
one you cannot go to www.lvllord.de and download his Event 4228 patcher,
which will let you adjust the connection rate upward.

Just before I start, one more question....

I never use any P2P program simultaneously on both computers. Given this, I assumed that using the same ports wouldn't be a problem. Right?

As part of my previous problem solving, I adjusted the listening port on my torrent program. It didn't make any difference. I still couldn't connect regardless of which port I used. That's part of the reason that I thought the problem was WinXP rather than the P2P program, router or port.

It could be the event 4228 problem or simply that the software is so badly outdated.
Or both. That would explain the problem with XP. ;]

The same ports would be a problem when the router is online. It can only
forward a particular port to one machine.

The router may also have a firewall of some kind, but it doesn't seem likely
that this is your problem since you didn't change the network card.

Once you do get things working it would be worthwhile to set static internal IP
addresses and set up port forwarding for all the P2P apps. They can get along
with out it but performance and available sources increase greatly once you
get the incoming channels open.

Aaron,

Thanks again for all of your help.

Please excuse me for being so anal with all my questions but I really want to understand not only what I am doing but why I am doing it. I'm fairly astute with computers but am still green regarding networking.

Before I posted, I checked my event log for error 4228 and found none. I do have static IP addresses set up for my computer to router links.

I have read many posts telling people to port forward but have not done this. My reasoning is that I didn't set up port forwarding from my Win98SE machine and all P2P and torrent programs work just fine. If they work on the Win98SE machine, I'm rationalizing that they should also work on the Win XP machine w/o port forwarding. (after it is finally working, I will update my clients and port forward as you recommend)

Case in point.....
I just installed Opera 9.10 on both machines (without any changes to Opera, or the router. Of course, I granted permission to ZoneAlarm.). Opera 9.10 has an embedded bittorrent client. It will not connect from my Win XP machine but works perfectly from my Win98SE machine. This is the same symptom as BearShare. In my simple mind, this tells me that my P2P and torrent clients and router are OK but WinXP is the problem.

Am I missing something?

There is probably an interaction between XP and ZoneAlarm that doesn't exist in
Win98 since the TCP stack is three generations apart.
Have you tried uninstalling it yet?