I kept spotting those things, and fixing settings when I found them, but could never get it to completely cooperate. I wasn't entirely convinced it was the firewall until this morning. I dumped a lot of stuff when I uninstalled two Symantec programs (firewall and AV). I cleaned the disk, then I defragged, then I reinstalled the programs. I unplugged the DSL cable from the ethernet connection until I had reinstalled the firewall. Only when it was ready to update from the web did I plug it back in. Once that was up, I installed the Anti-Virus. You can't do one without doing the other, they don't play nicely togehter otherwise.
I used to use DOS all of the time--I bought my first computer in 1984, and have seen a lot come and go as far as PCs, their abilities, and the programs that run on them. MS-DOS is a very useful tool, but Microsoft has all but made it vanish completely (like it isn't really still there in the background). I even remember writing a few auto-exec batch files in my early computer days!