Yahoo and Firewalls

Guys, I need help and I need it now please. We just got our home computer back from repair after being attacked w/ spyware and viruses. The whole puter was wiped clean. Now, my wife loves to play canasta(?) on Yahoo at night, which is a good thing for me because it gives me time for unlimited Outdoor Channel viewing. Well, she can't get on to Yahoo and our computer guy says it because of a firewall. It lets her log on, but it want load. Help?


Jim M.

Turn the firewall off.

Skipper

Thanks Skipper, but exactly how do you do that? I am not much of a computer wiz.


Jim M.

Open the firewall's control panel and click on the button to turn it off. Different ones have them in different places sort of like the play button on a VCR. Just have to look for it.

Skipper

Not the firewall. . .

Theres a strong chance its not the firewall. It sounds like Java since your machine has been wiped clean. Open up yahoo or google. Search for "JRE 1.4.2" and download the Sun Java Run Time Environment and your problem will be solved. Keep me posted.

-Terry

I talked to my wife and she says the firewall or whatever is purposely in place to prevent the problems we had fixed. Apparently, all the stuff we were invaded by was caused by her going on to Yahoo to play games. Popups were always coming up and my computer guy thinks that where we were getting into all the trouble. I mean we had spyware out the wazoo, along w/ multiple viruses that Norton nor spybot did not catch, and we get very little email. So what now? Any suggestions?

Jim M.

Jim????

Jim,

Sometimes I don't like answering these questions b/c I sound like I know it all. I do not want to come off as this at all. I only wish to somehow help you guys with these type of problems. I can tell you from YEARS of experience your problems with pop ups and things of that nature will not be solved and permanantly fixed by implementing a firewall. If you recently had your computer wiped out and reinstalled, more than likely Java Run Time environment, JRE, is most likely not installed. This is needed in order to allow a Java applet to load such as yahoo games. The other possible problem is your Internet Security options are set to high in Internet Explorer. If you want to rid yourself of pop ups, educating yourself on how they get on your computer is the best advice I can give anyone. I run IT operations for a medium sized company in Atlanta, I have a 50,000$ Firewall and it will not stop pop ups. Pop ups occur through TCP port 80. You see this port on your computer as HTTP traffic. This is the same thing as a web page. If your firewall allows you to surf the internet, you can not stop pop ups. You can eliminate most of them. Google toolbar with pop up blocker enabled is one of the best ways. Try the two above solutions and if you still can't get this to work, call me at home tomorrow. I will fix your problem in a matter of minutes, I promise its not that difficult or will compromise your security.

I hope this helps and I don't sound like a know it all. I just like to see people happy while computing and not struggling to understand why mean people want there machine to run like crap!

-Terry

Thanks Terry, my wife is out of town until Sun evening, but I'll let her try to fix this herself, as she's much more computer literate than I am. When she returns, I'll show her this message and see what she can do w/ it. PM me your phone # and we'll call you if we have problems. Thanks a bunch, bud.


Jim M.