Nortons Firewall Prevented Access

About a month ago I finally set up a sharing network between my two PC's. My old computer has Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit), and my new one is Windows 10 Professional (64-bit).

Everything was working perfectly, and just last night, I was not able to access the shared folders in my Windows 10 computer from my Vista machine (but was still able to access my Vista shared folders from my Win-10). It was saying that the network was not accessible because it was not known.

For the life of me, I could not figure out exactly why it was doing this, then started doing some researching. There were all kinds of solutions that involved Windows itself, but one of them had to do with firewall settings in Windows Defender, which would apply to the firewall in the computer I'm trying to access (Win 10). Since I have Nortons, that overrides the firewall settings in Defender.

As a troubleshoot, I temporarily disabled the Nortons firewall in my Windows 10 computer, then tried accessing my files from my Vista machine, and it worked. So obviously the firewall was the problem. I was able to find some information to allow access between the private network of the two computers in Nortons firewall settings called Network Trust (setting it from private to 'full trust'), but still was not working after I enabled my Windows 10 firewall again.

I then saw a setting in Nortons firewall, called Device Trust, where you allow full access of a specific device based upon the IPV4 address. So I entered that information for my Vista machine's address, saved the settings, and that worked (was able to access my shared folders in my Windows 10 machine again with my firewall enabled). And just to be safe so that I don't have a similar issue trying to access my Vista machine from my Windows 10 one, I configured the same setting in Nortons in my Vista machine too.

I know that I resolved my own issue, but WHY would my firewall in my Windows 10 machine all of a sudden decide to do this? It's just annoying that everything was working fine for a month since I set up the network, and then that issue occurred.

Caledon Ken said:

Can't answer why but had similar issue helping a friend with a Windows 10 computer accessing an XP computer.

Maybe, and it's a big maybe, Norton is now being overly protective against machines that are not under support?


I saw that you created some sort of bypass based on IPv4 address. As you network is likely using dynamic addresses there is no guarantee that Vista machine will get same IP address every time.

You can do two things to force.

Physically set Vista machine to have a Static IPv4 address outside your DCHP range or ....

Reserve the address in router based on MAC Hardware address. Reserving address is usually the easiest.

Thanks for your response, Ken, you helped me not too long ago with another issue. Yes, I configured a bypass in Nortons firewall settings using the address of my Vista machine on the network (IPv4). There is a setting called 'Device Trust' which allows you to do that.

Everything is working fine now since I configured that, so I'm not sure if I should set a static IP or reserving the address like you suggested. I guess if I have another problem, that's what I'll do.

But your guess makes a lot of sense regarding Nortons being more cautious of allowing access from computers that are not supported anymore. Every once in a while my Nortons goes through a program update, so maybe a recent update in it is what triggered the firewall to block my old machine.

Caledon Ken said:

Yes I remember. You have a renter.

I'd look into router and reserve now. Usually very easy process.

Don't remember router model.

Post or PM and I will look in manual.

Yes, you remember. Not really a renter, she's a neighbor lol. It's a duplex we both live in, but she uses my WiFi.

Oh, and the Router is a Netgear N600 - C3700. So I assume that you're saying that I would set the reserve in the router's settings? And after I do that, I won't have to do the bypass in my Nortons firewall settings (reverse the configuration)?

Caledon Ken said:

Once you set a reservation, in router, the router will only give that IP address to that device, no matter what order all devices are powered on in.



That is it, no other changes anywhere in Norton or windows.



I'll try to get back soon.

Ok, great, that sounds easy enough. And thank you.

Caledon Ken said:

So they don't call it Reserving, looks like they use the name "Manual Assignment". I think it is the same.

Page 46 and 47 in your manual. (Point 8 on p47, figure on p46)

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/w...600_Manual.pdf

Make sure Vista machine is awake and connected.

Get a command prompt on Vista machine and type

ipconfig /all

Under the Ethernet Adapter you will see the line physical address. This is MAC address.



Note the address. Must be exact.

Sign in to router. Head to appropriate tab.

Enable Manual Assignment, click Yes, and click on little red arrow under the heading MAC Address. Think you should see a collection of addresses, these are devices attached.

Select Vista's MAC address and it will likely populate IP address in box to right, you may have to enter. You likely know it off by heart now. With correct MAC address and IP address click "Add/Delete".



If you are happy click Apply at bottom of page.

You can go in and explorer. Click "Yes" and see if MAC address are there. You can always click back to "NO". If you don't "APPLY" router won't change anything on your exploration mission.


Ken

Wow, thank you for the extremely detailed instructions. I will definitely do this and let you know how it goes. It seems pretty simple. The only part I didn't understand fully was the very last part of what you wrote,

"You can go in and explorer. Click "Yes" and see if MAC address are there. You can always click back to "NO". If you don't "APPLY" router won't change anything on your exploration mission."

Are you referring to exploring in the settings of the router after I set the Manual Assignment?

Btw, I'm going to have to get into actually doing this later tonight because as soon as I post this message, I will be tied up until later. But I will let you know how it works out. Thanks again, Ken!

- - - Updated - - -

Caledon Ken said:

So they don't call it Reserving, looks like they use the name "Manual Assignment". I think it is the same.

Page 46 and 47 in your manual. (Point 8 on p47, figure on p46)

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/w...600_Manual.pdf

Make sure Vista machine is awake and connected.

Get a command prompt on Vista machine and type

ipconfig /all

Under the Ethernet Adapter you will see the line physical address. This is MAC address.



Note the address. Must be exact.

Sign in to router. Head to appropriate tab.

Enable Manual Assignment, click Yes, and click on little red arrow under the heading MAC Address. Think you should see a collection of addresses, these are devices attached.

Select Vista's MAC address and it will likely populate IP address in box to right, you may have to enter. You likely know it off by heart now. With correct MAC address and IP address click "Add/Delete".



If you are happy click Apply at bottom of page.

You can go in and explorer. Click "Yes" and see if MAC address are there. You can always click back to "NO". If you don't "APPLY" router won't change anything on your exploration mission.


Ken

Ok, so I started working on this, and the manual that you were looking at is of another Netgear modem-router model. This is the manual for my modem https://www.downloads.netgear.com/fi...M_4Mar2014.pdf

After doing some searching through it, it seems as though they're referring to what I need to do with this as Port Triggering, but I just wanted to confirm it with you first, and if so, please confirm the steps so that I don't make any mistakes. It seems pretty straightforward in the manual, but again, I need to confirm if this is the procedure I need to follow.

- - - Updated - - -

Caledon Ken said:

So they don't call it Reserving, looks like they use the name "Manual Assignment". I think it is the same.

Page 46 and 47 in your manual. (Point 8 on p47, figure on p46)

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/w...600_Manual.pdf

Make sure Vista machine is awake and connected.

Get a command prompt on Vista machine and type

ipconfig /all

Under the Ethernet Adapter you will see the line physical address. This is MAC address.



Note the address. Must be exact.

Sign in to router. Head to appropriate tab.

Enable Manual Assignment, click Yes, and click on little red arrow under the heading MAC Address. Think you should see a collection of addresses, these are devices attached.

Select Vista's MAC address and it will likely populate IP address in box to right, you may have to enter. You likely know it off by heart now. With correct MAC address and IP address click "Add/Delete".



If you are happy click Apply at bottom of page.

You can go in and explorer. Click "Yes" and see if MAC address are there. You can always click back to "NO". If you don't "APPLY" router won't change anything on your exploration mission.


Ken

Ok, so I take back what I said in my last post, it's not Port Triggering. I thought it was Port Triggering because in the manual it mentions something about reservation in there associated with it (when I searched for that particular term in the manual), so that's why I thought it was the Port Triggering. And there is nothing in there about 'Manual Assignment' either, so that's changed with my particular model.

Dug a little deeper into all of my settings, and I for sure was able to find the exact page for this control in the screen shot attached. Looks like they make it very simple, and it lists all the devices by IP and MAC addresses, so I don't need to enter anything as far as addresses. All I need to do is just select 'Turn on Access Control' at the top, then hit apply. Then as you can see, you can individually allow or block specific devices listed. That's easy enough lol.

EDIT: On second thought, it looks like all the devices in there are set to allowed by default anyway (PC-2008 is my Vista machine), and the Turn on Access Control just allows you to allow or block individual devices. Therefore I still need to know how to set a reserve like you were explaining. The only thing I could find in the manual was the Port Triggering, but I'm not 100% sure.