ICS screwed up - How to repair/reset?

[phannes]

Hello dear Microsoft experts,

I desperately need help! I'm fiddling around with my dead ICS since 2
weeks and don't have any more ideas how repair this service for my
Windows XP (Sp1 - all patches). I read the knowledge base and half of
the post on google newsgroup but didn't find a solution for my
specific problem of repairing/resetting ICS of Windows XP.

The whole story:
Since i installed Zonealarm some months ago and played around a little
bit (installed another NIC and removed again, settings, etc.. can't
remember exactly) my Internet Connection Sharing service startet to
act strange and sometimes gave error messages when activating and
disabling the service.
At the end ICS it didn't work anymore!

That wasn't a big problem to me that time, because I was using
Winroute (4.xx) for NAT anyway which worked quite good for me.

Now, 2 weeks ago I changed to Winroute Firewall (5.1.3) but this
program now makes some problems with FTP connects (from Gateway AND
clients) which is well known for the former versions of Winroute (at
least I read this in the newsgroups) but not for the Winroute Firewall
5.x. FTP and (Messenger voice chats) only works, if I completely stop
Winroute Firewall so it has nothing to do with the firewall rules!
In addition, NAT of Winroute also makes some trouble now... sometimes
only http works, and no icq, messenge or even email - then after
reboot everything is fine again!
When I disable the ICS in the settings of my Internet connection,
Winroute also stops working, although it should do NAT on its own!

So my conclusion is, that even Winroute' NAT is depending somehow on
Windows ICS, which in my case isn't functional at all. BTW: Although I
enabled Upnp of Winroute MSN Messenger (6.1) wont do Voice chats - in
the settings it says: "You're connected via a non-Upnp firewall to the
internet..."!

I think the ICS is completely screwup up on my system!!

SOLUTION?: The first thing where I should start to solve the whole
bunch of connections problems is surely the ICS of my Windows XP. But
here I'm already stuck: I can enable and disable ICS, choose the
adapters, set IP's and other setting, everything without any problems
and error messages, but ICS does simply not work!! When I use the
network connection wizard, even there everything will be set without
any complaints (even the log file says OK!) but it has not effect on
the working of NAT.
From the client I can only ping the host, but not an IP on the
internet.

So my question here is, what can I do for repairing ICS without
reinstalling Windows XP from the scratch on? Are there any settings
for ICS in the registry which i can reset? Is there a way of
uninstalling and installing ICS for Windows XP? (windows 98 can!)
Would an installation over the existing installation repair ICS?


I would highly appreciate any help from the experts!
Thank you very much!
Stefan


BTW: I have done ICS thousends of times, so please dont try ro help me
with simple advices like: set the right IP on HOST and CLIENT. Thanks!

 

[Hans-Georg Michna]

Stefan,

occasionally some people from Microsoft come into these
newsgroups, but most people here are not Microsoft employees.
Perhaps some can still be called Microsoft experts.

Anyway, my first recommendation would be to uninstall both Zone
Alarm and WinRoute. Disabling is often not enough---you have to
completely uninstall them.

If this doesn't already bring ICS back to life, I would remove
all network components in the network properties, reboot, then
add them again.

If this still doesn't do the trick, please have a look at
http://www.michna.com/kb/WxNetwork.htm.

Hans-Georg

 

[phannes]

thank you very much... deinstalling (not only deactivating) did the
thing.
Have you got any suggestions for a good firewall which does not make
the problems mentioned below (Zonealarm does not work well with p2p
clients), has low ressources requirements and can Upnp?
Or do you think Windows Firewall is enought protection?

Thank you again! I'm really happy not to have to reinstall Windows XP!

Best regards,
Stefan

 

[Hans-Georg Michna]

thank you very much... deinstalling (not only deactivating) did the
thing.
Have you got any suggestions for a good firewall which does not make
the problems mentioned below (Zonealarm does not work well with p2p
clients), has low ressources requirements and can Upnp?
Or do you think Windows Firewall is enought protection?

Stefan,

I personally think that firewalls aren't that important. I
appreciate their logging of information more than their
protection.

After using ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) for some time, I
finally gave in and bought a cheap WAN router (an SMC 7004 VBR,
which is fair enough as long as you don't use high-demand
programs such as file sharing, which contains DHCP, NAT, DNS
proxy, etc., and a stateful inspection firewall). I recommend
that. You will never look back, and they don't cost much these
days.

If you want to stay with ICS, perhaps because of low use, I
think that the built-in firewall is good enough. But if you want
to keep using Zone Alarm, you can still do so if you use a
sufficiently new version and set it up properly, for example
with medium Internet Zone security and low Trusted Zone security
and making sure your LAN address range is within the Trusted
Zone. You can achieve that easily by defining an IP address
range that contains all your LAN addresses (including router),
giving it a name, and putting that into the Trusted Zone.

Hans-Georg