XP Home / Norton Personal Firewall - excessive ping times

C

Comedian

Guest
I just installed Windows XP Home on my system. I wiped out the entire partition to install it fresh. I have installed Norton's Personal Firewall and Systemworks, and Tribes 2. Patched all software to latest versions.

Tribes 2 ran great before the re-install, but now I'm getting huge ping times on T2 servers. The server itself will read in the 70s, but when I'm online and especially when there's a lot of activity around me, the ping will climb into the hundreds or thousands, rendering it unplayable.

This symptom is one I know I experienced before with my older version of Norton Internet Security. I used to simply turn off the firewall before playing, until I was finially able to get a rule setup to not scan the incoming UDP packets. However, I've forgotten exactly how that rule was created.

Here's the real kicker: even if I disable both the firewall and the virus checker, I still get these symptoms. I've also disabled the firewall built into XP (on the Network Connections icon of the Control Panel). My next step will be to uninstall all of the Norton software, but I thought I'd post here for suggestions first.

Is there something about XP itself that would be holding up these packets? I've run speedtests at dslreports and my bandwith seems normal for my cable modem. I get slight hitches in Battlefield 1942, but nothing like the total meltdown T2 experiences. Also, does anyone know how best to setup a rule for Norton Personal Firewall to permit T2 to work well?

Any advice you might have would be welcome. Thanks!

P.S. As a bonus question, anyone know why I get the message:

An instance of "C:\Program Files\Messenger\msmsgs.exe" is preparing to access the Internet for the first time

every couple of minutes in my event log? I don't even USE Microsoft Messenger, and I selected it to be uninstalled at the Add/Remove programs tab. I saw the information in the XP tips sticky above about it being a core feature in XP, so I don't mind it hanging around in the background, but what's it doing every two minutes?


My specs:

Athlon 1.3 Gig
512 Meg 133 Memory
Windows XP Home
GeForce 4 ti 4600
Cable modem connection
Linksys LNE 100tx Ethernet card
 
Comedian said:
I just installed Windows XP Home on my system. I wiped out the entire partition to install it fresh. I have installed Norton's Personal Firewall and Systemworks, and Tribes 2. Patched all software to latest versions.

Tribes 2 ran great before the re-install, but now I'm getting huge ping times on T2 servers. The server itself will read in the 70s, but when I'm online and especially when there's a lot of activity around me, the ping will climb into the hundreds or thousands, rendering it unplayable.

This symptom is one I know I experienced before with my older version of Norton Internet Security. I used to simply turn off the firewall before playing, until I was finially able to get a rule setup to not scan the incoming UDP packets. However, I've forgotten exactly how that rule was created.

Here's the real kicker: even if I disable both the firewall and the virus checker, I still get these symptoms. I've also disabled the firewall built into XP (on the Network Connections icon of the Control Panel). My next step will be to uninstall all of the Norton software, but I thought I'd post here for suggestions first.

Is there something about XP itself that would be holding up these packets? I've run speedtests at dslreports and my bandwith seems normal for my cable modem. I get slight hitches in Battlefield 1942, but nothing like the total meltdown T2 experiences. Also, does anyone know how best to setup a rule for Norton Personal Firewall to permit T2 to work well?

Any advice you might have would be welcome. Thanks!

P.S. As a bonus question, anyone know why I get the message:

An instance of "C:\Program Files\Messenger\msmsgs.exe" is preparing to access the Internet for the first time

every couple of minutes in my event log? I don't even USE Microsoft Messenger, and I selected it to be uninstalled at the Add/Remove programs tab. I saw the information in the XP tips sticky above about it being a core feature in XP, so I don't mind it hanging around in the background, but what's it doing every two minutes?


My specs:

Athlon 1.3 Gig
512 Meg 133 Memory
Windows XP Home
GeForce 4 ti 4600
Cable modem connection
Linksys LNE 100tx Ethernet card
Click to expand...
get it the fuck off your system..

for the msmsgs.exe thing.. just rename that exe to something else and reboot.. should solve all the gayness
 
You can disable/uninstall msmsgs.exe (Microsoft Messenger Service).
 
No luck so far. I've uninstalled all of the Norton products, and removed everything other than the TCP/IP protocol from the Network Connections. My RWIN is set to 64,240, and the tweak test and speed tests at dslreports say everything is fine. Battlefield 1942 runs really well now, but T2 is still a mess.

I've moved the settings in the Network tab in T2 from 28.8 to LAN and every point in between with no visible effect. I even lowered all of the visual settings to minimum to see if that helped. It made the game pretty darn ugly, but otherwise no. 8) My frame rate goes to 122, then down to 7 or so as the lag spikes happen every couple of seconds. More often when there's more people around, so it does seem related to the amount of UDP traffic.

Could it be something in PJ's scripts? Should I re-install T2 fresh and try again? Or is there some other setting in XP I'm missing that may be holding up T2's specific type of networking code?

Any advice you might have would be greatly appreciated. I'm about ready to go back to 98SE. *shudder* Thanks!
 
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