If Look ‘N’ Stop Has Stopped, Here’s What To Do

Last Updated on: 21st November 2016, 11:12 am

Right off the top, if you’re not using the
Look ‘N’ Stop Firewall,
feel free to skip to the next post unless you’re one of those people who reads everything just because.

For those of you still with me, hopefully I can save you from going through the trouble I just had.

In the new batch of Windows Updates is one known as KB951748 that changes the way that DNS is handled. As a result, Look ‘N’ Stop and perhaps some other firewalls didn’t know what to do with the new settings and stopped allowing any connections to be made to the internet. I discovered this completely by chance when I restarted and had no access to anything. For some reason I wondered what would happen if I turned the firewall off. To my surprise, everything instantly started working again. I put the firewall back on and everything stopped. Rince, lather, repeat. Don’t ask me why I tried that, but I’m glad I did.

At first I thought the issue was probably with the firewall, so I thought I’d reinstall and start over. I was getting ready to do that when a little voice in my head said “dude, check the
forum
first. Again, I’m glad I did.

One of the first things I saw was
this thread,
which appears to have set things right. I’ll paste the answer to the problem below so that you don’t have to read the whole thing.

Hi,

I’ve reproduced the issue, and the problem is a the port range for the local port has changed for DNS connections. It seems it is no longer 1024-5000 but 49152-65535 (like under Vista).

To fix this, you have to edit the “UDP : Authorize name resolution (DNS)” rule.
Two possibilities:
– either you have 1024 and 5000 mentioned for that rule, and replace them by 49152 and 65535
– or you have “In local” for the criteria, and then replace it with “In range A-B” and enter just below 49152 and 65535 as well.

If it works, don’t forget to save the updated ruleset.
Otherwise check the log again to see what is blocked now.

Regards,

Frederic

I used the simple replacing the port numbers option and everything’s working fine here, at least until the next time something breaks.

Oh, and just in case you’re not sure how to find the rules list, it’s in the internet filtering tab. Find the one you’re looking for in the list, then click edit and change the numbers. It’s really pretty simple, much moreso than I was expecting. Generally nothing that has the potential to piss me off that much is ever solved so easily.

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