Win XP SP2 Firewall crashes Mac OS X!

[BeoVir]

I was just trying to play a game of Warcraft 3 over a Lan with a friend. He had recently upgraded to SP2 and his machine was running fine. When we tried to create a game we ran into a problem where I could see him create a game but he couldn't see me create on! Not only that but I couldn't koin the game he created. If I did try to join a game that he created my PB would completely freeze up. I couldn't force quit or anything. After several attempts to "fix" my mac I asked him if he had recently upgraded to SP2 when he said yes we checked his firewall and it was blocking Warcraft 3 from using some ports. Once we turned the firewall off we had no problems!!

I am curious as to why windows firewall would cause my mac to crash and if this is a "special feature" in the eyes of MS?

Also anyone else see anything about this?

 

[Darwin]

I am curious as to why windows firewall would cause my mac to crash and if this is a "special feature" in the eyes of MS?

Also anyone else see anything about this?

This might have something to do with the stealth feature of the Windows Firewall which stops Hackers (and anyone else) seeing the ports or even the computer itself

Basically your Mac send a request to join the game but the Firewall stopped the request from getting to the port and because it is in stealth you wouldn't have got an error saying that the port was closed so the request was being sent again and must have locked your computer

Properly not how it happened but its a guess

 

[tomf87]

Any firewall that would drop these packets would cause your Mac to "freeze". Essentially, your Mac is waiting on these packets to be replied to in some fashion. If the system you were connecting to was not receiving packets on this port, it would send a reset packet, indicating that port is closed. However, most firewalls silently drop these packets so no response is received from his machine.

It's not MS trying to cause Mac's to crash. It's called security, and something they should have done long ago. Actually, you could probably blame the freeze on the game manufacturer for allowing the game to freeze if no response is received from the other host. They should have error checking in their code.

The only other thing I see is that more and more people are looking for reasons to blame MS for their issues. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Windows fan, but hey, I know where to draw the line.

 

[JLS]

He can still turn the firewall off in the control panel.. just tell him to do this while he plays. If he is worried about security tell him to use a firewall he can configure.. like zone alarm.

 

[tomf87]

He can still turn the firewall off in the control panel.. just tell him to do this while he plays. If he is worried about security tell him to use a firewall he can configure.. like zone alarm.

You can configure the MS firewall to let these ports through, as long as you know the port number. Actually it is a better idea to do this than turn the whole thing off.

 

[wPod]

You can configure the MS firewall to let these ports through, as long as you know the port number. Actually it is a better idea to do this than turn the whole thing off.

i agree, its better to leave just the ports open you need for warcraft, im sure you can easily find those on the web or on a specific warcraft site.

 

[JLS]

I use sygate PFW.. there is no way I would ever use windows firewall at all. Just my choice.