Best Choice Software

A Firewall is Keeping BestChoice From Accessing The Internet

Software and hardware firewalls have recently become popular with the proliferation of online viruses, trojan horses, spam, etc. Unfortunately, many people haven't learned how to use them properly, and the companies creating the firewalls haven't made them very user friendly, which creates problems for other software programs that need to access the internet like BestChoice.

An improperly configured firewall can cause all kinds of problems for BestChoice.

1. It keeps you from being able to update your executable or databases.

2. It will keep you from being able to download todays stock data.

3. It wont allow BestChoice to access certain delayed data like options prices, todays high volume stock lists, or largest % gainers or losers lists.

If you are attempting to do one of these things, and you get either a winsock error, an error saying BestChoice cannot connect to the website, or some other error having to do with BestChoice connecting to the internet, and you have verified that you are connected to the internet, then 99 times out of 100 it is your firewall.

You may not even think you have a firewall, or know what one is. If you are running the Windows XP operating system, and have downloaded the SP2 (service pack 2) from Microsoft, then you have a firewall, because Microsoft included one in the SP2. (You may or may not have it currently enabled, but more on that in a minute).

We cannot possibly give you help on all of the possible firewalls out there, but we can give you a general direction to get you started troubleshooting your firewall. First, we will talk about what a firewall is, and how it works.

A firewall is designed to keep the bad guys out of your computer while you are on the internet. Since so many people today are going to high speed internet (either via DSL or cable), most computers are automatically online when your computer is on. With the faster speeds available, it can make your computer an open system to a hacker wanting to take advantage. That is where a firewall comes in. Without being too technical, it keeps hackers from being able to access your computer over your internet connection.

A hacker will typically try to plant a program on your computer which will run in the background and perform certain tasks (infect files, send spam, etc). A firewall does a good job of preventing this. But a firewall also tries to protect your computer form the inside as well. Since a hacker may have gotten a virus past your firewall via email or some other means, the firewall also will monitor all programs on your computer attempting to access the internet, in case one of them is a virus. This is where the problems start with the legitimate programs running on your computer like BestChoice.

Now you may be thinking that since your Microsoft Internet Explorer is showing web sites ok, then it can't be the firewall, but that is not the case. Since Microsoft Internet Explorer is such a popular program for accessing the internet, and everyone knows Microsoft programs are trustworthy for the most part, most firewall programs have Internet Explorer already listed in their database as being ok to acess the internet. Most firewall software companies have not heard of BestChoice.

A firewall will keep a database of programs that have attempted to access the internet. When you run BestChoice for the first time, and it attempts to connect to the internet to download data, the firewall sees this. The firewall doesn't know whether BestChoice is a virus, or a legitimate program. You have to tell it.

Since the firewall does not have BestChoice in it's database yet, the firewall will open a message window alerting you to the fact that BestChoice is trying to access the internet, and asks you if it is ok. You need to let the firewall program know it is ok, and also to let BestChoice access the internet in the future. As long as you do this, then your BestChoice program will not have any problems in the future downloading data as long as you are online.

At this point, your BestChoice program may be having problems connecting to the internet even though you are online. You may have gotten the message from the firewall in the past, and not realizing what it was asking, inadvertantly told it not to let BestChoice access the internet. Some firewalls are ok at letting you know what is going on, and some firewalls do a lousy job.

Either way, at this point, you have to open the firewall program, where somewhere it should show you a list of current programs that have tried in the past to access the internet.

Another thing to consider is the fact that you may have two firewall programs running at the same time. Remember earlier that we mentioned that the Service Pack 2 from microsoft included a firewall. You may also have another firewall program running if you have Norton's Internet Suite or one of McAfee's products installed.

If you are running the Microsoft Windows XP operating system, you can check to see if you have the Microsoft firewall installed by clicking on the start button at the bottom left of your screen, and then clicking on the control panel.

If you have the firewall installed, you should see an icon labeled "Windows Firewall". Double click on this icon, and it will open the firewall window. You should see a tab labeled "Exceptions". Click on this label. You will see a list of all the programs being tracked by the Microsoft Firewall program. Here you can add and edit the list of programs. Make sure BestChoice is in the list and enabled for internet access.

If you have also installed either Nortons Internet Suite, or one of McAffee's products, they run as small icons in the bottom right toolbar next to the time. If you are not sure if you have one of these programs installed, you can move your mouse over these icons and they will pull up a little window letting you know their name. If you see a firewall program running down there, usually you can double click or right click on the firewall icon to bring up the program itself, or a list of options for the program.

Now, it is important to distinguish the difference between a firewall and an antivirus program. They are not the same. Nortons Internet Suite includes both an antivirus and firewall program. You will have to be able to know the difference, and go into the firewall program to change the settings.

You will be looking for a list of programs in the firewall database. They should be listed somewhere within the firewall program itself, like the Microsoft Windows Firewall explained above. The firewall program should give you the ability to either change the internet settings for BestChoice, or add the BestChoice software program to the firewall database list if it is not in the list. After this, the BestChoice software program will be able to access the internet.

If you not sure about any of this, then we highly recommend contacting either the company of the firewall that is running on your system, or your local computer tech that helped you with your system. We only provide tech support for the BestChoice software itself. We cannot provide tech support for another companies firewall software, as there are many firewall software programs out there, and we would not be able to keep up with them. Here at BestChoice, we only use the Microsoft Firewall that came with the Service Pack 2.

For more information about this website, email webmaster@bestchoicesoftware.com