Yahoo messenger and firewalls

[t1grm]

Does anyone know if there’s a local firewall on Win 2K Pro that would stop you using Yahoo messenger and if so how do you switch it off? A colleague is trying to use Yahoo messenger but it won’t let them sign in. I’ve tried with my ID and it doesn’t work either. The IT helpdesk don’t want to know because officially we’re not supposed to be using it However it works fine on my PC (XP Pro) and we’re both connected to the same domain. Any ideas?

[scoobybloke]

As far as I can remember, I think that there is an option to run the Yahoo messenger client on TCP port 80 (i.e. standard HTTP web traffic) - most firewalls won't be able to block this (unless you have one of the newer versions that can detect IM type data flows). The standard install uses a known TCP port that would probably be blocked by your corporate firewall - hence the reason you can't log in.

SB

[ThatPhilBrettGuy]

Got a proxy server? I 'think' Yahoo uses the IE connection defaults. Are they the same?

[t1grm]

Cheers Scooby Bloke

Fixed it by going to Messenger -> Preferences -> Connection and changing it to “Firewall with no proxies”.