Shoutbox

When I try to play games (such as checkers or chess) with somebody on MSN, it always says that the games are unavailable.  Is there something that I can do to fix this?

Thank-you

This is probably your firewall that's blocking, what anti-virus app do u have?

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Originally posted by Nitrolinken
This is probably your firewall that's blocking, what anti-virus app do u have?

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What? WTF have firewalls and anti-virus got to do with this?

It'll be server issues most likely. The game itself should use the pre-existing conversation connection to exchange data.

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Originally posted by RaceProUK

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Originally posted by Nitrolinken
This is probably your firewall that's blocking, what anti-virus app do u have?

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What? WTF have firewalls and anti-virus got to do with this?

It'll be server issues most likely. The game itself should use the pre-existing conversation connection to exchange data.

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It quite possibly coul be a firewall issue or a hardware issue because I have had this problem and it sorted itself out when we opened some ports in our router and our adsl modem becau apparently it is a router too.  I forget the ports you need to open though sorry.

EDIT: I did a google search and messenger uses the ports 3891 to 6901. I hope this helps

I have the same prob, when it first happend I restarted my computer, turned off my firewall and tried restarting messenger, I can't figuer it out

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Originally posted by Cam66
I have the same prob, when it first happend I restarted my computer, turned off my firewall and tried restarting messenger, I can't figuer it out

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Have you got a router that you are running your internet through or some kind of modem?  You might need to open some of the ports to be able to do it like I mensioned.

if you are running Norton Personal firewall or NIS, then remove port 80 from the protected ports list on the Firewall options window

had the same problem,

can't remember where i found the fix.

odd though that Msn 6.0 games worked fine, with port 80 protected, but in 7.0+ they didn't

I have the same problem with different people, but it seems to happen at random. There doesn't seem to be anything that can be done about it, because it's not obvious what is causing it. A firewall problem would be consistent, for example.

thanks, i'll try opening those ports

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Originally posted by yourmama_20
then remove port 80 from the protected ports list

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Yeah, that's it, expose a well-known port to attack

MSN games do not use port 80: that's reserved for HTTP, the thing that lets you browse websites. My PC has port 80 nicely locked down, as does our router, and guess what? Games still work.
Maybe Messenger says the 'service is unavailable' because the service actually is unavailable!

A few more things:

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Originally posted by yourmama_20
odd though that Msn 6.0 games worked fine, with port 80 protected, but in 7.0+ they didn't

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Coincidence.

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Originally posted by markee
I did a google search and messenger uses the ports 3891 to 6901.

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That is an incomplete range of ports. In fact, there's a post on the forum that lists all the ports Messenger uses, and what for.

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Originally posted by sufcste
There doesn't seem to be anything that can be done about it, because it's not obvious what is causing it

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Precisely

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Originally posted by Cam66
thanks, i'll try opening those ports

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And wait for the attacks to happen.
And I'm not joking: an unprotected Windows machine exposed to the Internet will be compromised in, on average, 4 minutes.