To cut a long story short, I reckon it was because your firewall's settings weren't configured properly. Perhaps they were too strict or just not set as they should have been. I've used Norton for a long time, and I've used it with many different operating systems, and I've found it to be of little trouble to me. If you want to install it again I could run through each setting with you and see if I can help Send me a PM and I'll send you my email address if you want to do that. I use Norton Internet Security 2005, but the settings will be more or less the same hehehe. If you can't be arsed with all that, maybe you could try ZoneAlarm or something instead I used that for a while and it was pretty good, but my home network suffered a little because of it. I had to mess around with it for a while to get it set up right. If you want to use that you can get it here: www.zonelabs.com they have a free version and a commercial version. For general purposes you won't need to pay for the commercial version, the free one will suffice

if that is the case then how about you open your norton and view the settings and do a print screen of it (hit Alt+Print screen at the same time) and paste it on a paint document then save and send it to me at cinsana88@yahoo.com . i will then look at it and compare it to my screen. if this is not the case then maybe it could be that i am connected to a network and norton is blocking the network. at least i think that could be a possibllity. Maybe i am wrong. Is yours a network? if so then that may not be the problem.

I'm connected to a small home network. My little bro's computer goes through my computer to get online. Every home network uses the same IP addresses (unless you set them manually). If you use Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) try making special permissions for the following IP details:

IP Address: 169.254.0.0
Mask: 255.255.0.0

If you connect directly to the internet and the other computers on your network connect through you, then that won't be an issue (unless your fellow networked chums are having troubles). Other than this I'm stumped. There are some screen shots of my NIS settings on their way to your email address, so hopefully they'll help a little...

Good luck