XP Home ICS/Firewall weirdness

Hi,
I've just spent several days cleaning up a relative's desktop Windows
XP home machine after a nasty trojan infection (thank you sooo much,
NAV), reinstallation of the OS currently isnt an option.
There now appears to be a strange problem with the Windows Firewall/ICS
services (either a consequence of the trojan infection, the clean up,
or both)
The desktop is connected to the internet via a broadband modem lurking
on a USB port, shared to the LAN via a gigabit ethernet port via ICS.
Connecting a laptop to the LAN network interface with a crossover
cable, I get connectivity to the desktop for things like DNS, but no
access to the Internet.

so, after a bit of Googling and fiddling, the current situation is this

1. Desktop boots, ICS/Firewall service appears to have started
normally, computers on the LAN interface can see the desktop machine,
but not the Internet. Desktop can happily see both LAN and Internet.

2. If I type at the cmd prompt ( or lazily click on a batch file
containing the lines)

c:\windows\system32\net stop sharedaccess
c:\windows\system32\net start sharedaccess

The computers on the LAN now have access to the Internet, but it
appears some of the connections to the Internet are being reset after
approx 30 seconds (active/inactive - it makes no difference). Desktop
is still seeing both LAN and Internet, and connects to the same
Internet sites the LAN machines are having the problems with.

At the time of composing this, I've a ssh connection running to a
remote server from the LAN which appears to be still fine after 5
minutes, earlier today, it was suffering 30 second connection resets,
connections from the desktop to the same remote server suffered no
similar problems.

The need for doing the connection sharing via the desktop will be going
away soon (by the end of this week hopefully, once they get their
wireless router).
I was going to replace the Windows Firewall/ICS with a Zonealarm and
Comtun Pro combo, and still might, to see what happens, but am
interested to see if anyone has any ideas/suggestions/comments about
this, they'll be most gratefully received

regards

Brian.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Serious Security Issue in Windows XP SP2s Firewall
    ... Subject: AW: Serious Security Issue in Windows XP SP2's Firewall ... If you update a WinXP SP-1 with enabled Internet ... Connection Firewall ...
    (Focus-Microsoft)
  • Re: Internet Connection Delays
    ... >> I use Windows XP Pro with SP2 installed, AMD Duron Processor, ... >> have to wait 90 seconds to connect to the internet after my ... >> delete internet connection ... > I have found problems with some applications, relating to DEP. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Serious Security Issue in Windows XP SP2s Firewall
    ... PC-WELT discovers and fixes serious security issue in Windows XP SP2 ... Internet via dial-up or ISDN. ... Internet Connection Sharing of the PC ... network at home: Often, we did not even encounter password protection. ...
    (Bugtraq)
  • Re: Big hole??
    ... supposedly safe SP2 for Windows XP invites any Internet ... Connection Sharing of the PC has to be disabled. ... visible in their network at home: ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Wireless network issue for two SP2 computers
    ... with DSL Internet ... When I pull up view network computers, when I try to add network ... >The LAN connection also has TCP/IP, with Client for MS Networks, QoS Packet ... If the computers run the original or SP1 versions of Windows XP, ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.network_web)