winmx all of a sudden not connecting

[pingping]

Ok a few days ago winmx all of a sudden would not connect.  Ive ran the 4 spyware/addware removers I have.  Ran my antivirus.  Also ran registry mechanic.  Have tried installing and uninstalling it.  I run scandisck and defrag monthly.  I thought it might have been the firewall at first so i bypassed it.  The only firewall i have is a hardware one which i had bypassed to test and it still would not connect.

Ive tried about everything I can think of.  I also keep both temp folders empty.  Im running win2k pro.

Any suggestions or ideas would be very much appreciated.

[Darkness]

Sup Pingping
                   
Yo Man been having same prpbs as you and then ya get no u/l no d/l hate it.. what ya go got do is refrmat the computer bc there are prolly virsue on there and i know ya guuna say nope there arn't but some of them can't be detced as mine werent   lmao... but after that it should be all better.

[pingping]

i doubt its a virus, it is possible that there is one that isnt being detected but i highly doubt that.  for i would recognize it if there was.  i constantly keep msconfg cleaned and temp folders and registry editing.  however i think a certain spyware part has got on my system .  ive stoped 90 percent of it. its called search assistant however im not sure what .dll files or any files it uses for that matter.  havent been able to find any locations to files in the registry.  anyways im avoiding formatting for that just temp fixes the problem.  you learn nothing from it and probally will happen again.  anyways any other suggestions or know what files the assistant uses?

[Me Here]

WHOA!!

Lets hold our horses there Darkness.

First of all, suddenly loosing the ability to download, upload or connect can be virus or spyware related yes, however reformating your machine is a last resort.
Don't get us wrong we love people to get involved in helping, but telling folks to reformat is extreme advice, rarely acctually needed to fix problems.
You will notice here we help folks get rid of nasties without reformating quite often.
Lets not use the dynamite just yet! ...

Secondly, with the amount of removal and maintenence your doing Pingping, it sounds like its a settings issue somewhere, so like you I doubt its a virus related problem.

Okay so first lets look at your known problem.  Search Assistant removal,  have a look at this link for more information on steps to remove Home Search Assistant.

http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?p=172774

Now you cant connect to WinMX and it sounds like a firewall or possibly a router/modem issue to me.

I suggest these things,
If you have a router or modem with NAT capabilities (Network Address Translations), then its possible the settings allowing WinMX on certain ports need to be reset.  
You can do this by unplugging them for a Full one minute, then restart your modem first and router next.
Once you have done this restart the computer and go to your configurations of your router or modem and check that the ports and addresses are still correct.  You should double check what ports are set in WinMX by going to your WinMX program click on Settings > Internet connections > Incoming TCP > "Listen on port ???? for incoming TCP connections".  Then go to IN/OUT UDP connections > "Send on port ???? for in/out udp".
Also be sure no built in firewalls have been enabled some how.

You said you have a hardware firewall only, and you disabled it to bypass, often if your IP has changed for any reason you may need to reset any exceptions to allow WinMX through, I suggest you make sure that the exception is set to allow WinMX on the correct address and port numbers.

Be sure you are running the latest version of WinMX v3.54 beta 4, as they have put many bug fixes in this version.  Go HERE to get it and install it to a new folder in your C:\Program Files.

The last thing I suggest if none of the above applies or works for you, is to change your port setting in WinMX.  You can do this by going to the same place you went to check what ports you have set up.  
You can change them to any number between 0 and 65535, for example I used ports 60000 for my Incoming TCP and 58000 for my IN/OUT UDP ports then changed my firewall and router to match these.

Well so for starters try each of  these and let us know if any of it helped you out, and please DONT reformat just yet... lol....

[pingping]

That program worked.  It was the search assistant stopping it.  Anyways thank you very much for the advice.  Its nice to finally get some reply on a forum that was actually intelligent advice.

[Darkness]

Sorry... didnt mean to jump in on the reformating part... i was having the same problem... took the computer in sat ther veas 2 vursues thought  that was blocking it or something.. and nothing has changed and i am on the verg of formating it and... i dont what else to do... but i will try what is ^ there i am still learning about computers and hope to have afuture in them andi will be asking lots of questions

[Me Here]

Awesome to hear you got it taken care of Pingping, hope you come back and see us for all your WinMX needs...  

Darkness, as I mentioned we are here to help and love when more folks get involved, I am wondering exactly what problem your having as I said its usually a last resort to format and maybe with a few details we can help you get working too...

Let us know if we can help ya  ...

[pingping]

I celebrated to soon.  The page you posted I used it and the program and it appears to get rid of things.  However after manual registry editing and a few other things ive noticed one key installs itself as soon as i delete it.  I can delete it but it immediately comes back.  I will post a copy of the hijack this file and let you know what I have been doing but so far it hasnt appeared to do any good.

Logfile of HijackThis v1.99.1
Scan saved at 9:36:23 AM, on 6/2/2005
Platform: Windows 2000 SP4 (WinNT 5.00.2195)
MSIE: Internet Explorer v6.00 SP1 (6.00.2800.1106)

Running processes:
C:\WINNT\System32\smss.exe
C:\WINNT\system32\winlogon.exe
C:\WINNT\system32\services.exe
C:\WINNT\system32\lsass.exe
C:\WINNT\system32\svchost.exe
C:\WINNT\system32\spoolsv.exe
C:\WINNT\System32\svchost.exe
C:\WINNT\system32\hidserv.exe
C:\WINNT\system32\regsvc.exe
C:\WINNT\system32\MSTask.exe
C:\WINNT\System32\WBEM\WinMgmt.exe
C:\WINNT\System32\mspmspsv.exe
C:\WINNT\system32\svchost.exe
C:\WINNT\Explorer.EXE
C:\Program Files\FSI\F-Prot\F-StopW.EXE
C:\Program Files\Lavasoft\Ad-Aware SE Professional\Ad-Watch.exe
C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\YPager.exe
C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE
C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\hijackthis\HijackThis.exe

R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Bar = google
R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search,SearchAssistant =
R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Local Page =
R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Local Page =
R3 - URLSearchHook: {1A03F196-9617-4CA0-842B-A83CEECB022B} -  - (no file)
O2 - BHO: AcroIEHlprObj Class - {06849E9F-C8D7-4D59-B87D-784B7D6BE0B3} - C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader\ActiveX\AcroIEHelper.dll
O2 - BHO: Google Toolbar Helper - {AA58ED58-01DD-4d91-8333-CF10577473F7} - c:\program files\google\googletoolbar1.dll
O3 - Toolbar: &Google - {2318C2B1-4965-11d4-9B18-009027A5CD4F} - c:\program files\google\googletoolbar1.dll
O3 - Toolbar: Easy-WebPrint - {327C2873-E90D-4c37-AA9D-10AC9BABA46C} - C:\Program Files\Canon\Easy-WebPrint\Toolband.dll
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [F-StopW] C:\Program Files\FSI\F-Prot\F-StopW.EXE
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [AWMON] "C:\Program Files\Lavasoft\Ad-Aware SE Professional\Ad-Watch.exe"
O8 - Extra context menu item: &Google Search - res://C:\Program Files\Google\GoogleToolbar1.dll/cmsearch.html
O8 - Extra context menu item: Backward Links - res://C:\Program Files\Google\GoogleToolbar1.dll/cmbacklinks.html
O8 - Extra context menu item: Cached Snapshot of Page - res://C:\Program Files\Google\GoogleToolbar1.dll/cmcache.html
O8 - Extra context menu item: Easy-WebPrint Add To Print List - res://C:\Program Files\Canon\Easy-WebPrint\Resource.dll/RC_AddToList.html
O8 - Extra context menu item: Easy-WebPrint High Speed Print - res://C:\Program Files\Canon\Easy-WebPrint\Resource.dll/RC_HSPrint.html
O8 - Extra context menu item: Easy-WebPrint Preview - res://C:\Program Files\Canon\Easy-WebPrint\Resource.dll/RC_Preview.html
O8 - Extra context menu item: Easy-WebPrint Print - res://C:\Program Files\Canon\Easy-WebPrint\Resource.dll/RC_Print.html
O8 - Extra context menu item: Similar Pages - res://C:\Program Files\Google\GoogleToolbar1.dll/cmsimilar.html
O8 - Extra context menu item: Translate into English - res://C:\Program Files\Google\GoogleToolbar1.dll/cmtrans.html
O9 - Extra button: Messenger - {4528BBE0-4E08-11D5-AD55-00010333D0AD} - C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\yhexbmes0521.dll
O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: Yahoo! Messenger - {4528BBE0-4E08-11D5-AD55-00010333D0AD} - C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\yhexbmes0521.dll
O16 - DPF: Yahoo! Pool 2 - http://download.games.yahoo.com/games/clients/y/pote_x.cab
O16 - DPF: {74D05D43-3236-11D4-BDCD-00C04F9A3B61} (HouseCall Control) - http://a840.g.akamai.net/7/840/537/2004061001/housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/xscan53.cab
O16 - DPF: {B38870E4-7ECB-40DA-8C6A-595F0A5519FF} (MsnMessengerSetupDownloadControl Class) - http://messenger.msn.com/download/MsnMessengerSetupDownloader.cab
O23 - Service: Logical Disk Manager Administrative Service (dmadmin) - VERITAS Software Corp. - C:\WINNT\System32\dmadmin.exe

that is the file.  The key with the search assistant i have deleted.  I have also modified the default search hook many times to google however everytime it gets switched back to blank.  ive also manually searched the registry deleting anything with search assistant, srchasst , or anything related to combinations of those that i knew were related to it.  Ive also searched for sub_rfc1766 and deleted anything i could find on it.  But it appears theres a file or more on the computer that the program that site had and i am both missing.  I havent been abled to find any locations to the c with files all just ie links.  I have learned to defeat cws (cool web search) i learned that with the help of cws shredder.  However this thing appears to be a newer evil brother of it lol.  Anyways its really being a pain in my butt so to speak.  

Also as for darkness a few things here that might help you.  First off if you dont know about this im going to ask you to do something providing the forum dont mind.  Go to start, then run, they type msconfig.  Depending on what windows you are using will depend on the location of the startup tab but 98 percent of the time its on the fart right.  So click on the startup tab.  Under the tab you will find 3 things.  Items, item locations in c and item locations in registry.  I want you to type only the items and seperate each one by a comma like item , item , item and so on.  Type out only the checked items, if you have never used msconfig before by default they will be all checked.

If your running windows 2000 like i am you will find that msconfig does not come installed on it or at least it didnt mine.  anyways no problem you may download it from here.  Just be sure to pay attention to which one for what os for there different on 98 then for 2000 or xp.
http://www.perfectdrivers.com/howto/msconfig.html

Also if you dont mind may I ask what antivirus you are using?