FTP batch client and XP firewall problem

[Guest]

I'm having trouble getting a batch script to upload files to a remote server
via ftp. We've got a small LAN with a packet filtering NAT firewall at the
perimeter that handles active and passive transfers without a problem. I
first used IE with passive mode to upload and that worked fine, however, we
want a scripted solution that does some other things first for the user. I
don't think the ftp client that ships with XP will allow you to switch
between active and passive. It only runs in active mode and FTP would just
hang. I tried opening the firewall for ftp.exe but that didn't work. I
turned on XP's firewall logging function but did not see any dropped packets.
Eventually, I just temporarily disabled the XP firewall, ran the script and
turned it back on. Of course, that's no good.

I'd appreciate any help. Thanks.

 

[Mr. Backup]

type this... open the cmd window and type ftp , open site.address.com and
see if the windows xp firewall asks you if you want to allow this
connection. It should, problem at that point should be no more

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply. However, the problem appears to be the inbound
connections of the active ftp session. I had previously run the script as
well as typed each command in manually line by line including the open site
command. That works fine. XP firewall does not prompt for anything because
the outbound conversation originating from the workstation is not blocked.
I'm pretty sure when the ftp server tries to connect back to the workstation
using the listening port from the PORT command, it fails. I don't know why I
didn't see dropped packets in the log but I think that is the problem.