By default, Windows XP comes with a built in Firewall developed by Microsoft. This was given the wonderfully creative name "Windows Firewall". This firewall has caused developers and players of many programs a big, big headache for many years.
Now that we've established windows has a firewall. We're going to configure it to allow BYOND access. Any of you having issues with playing games due to pager not completing the login or Options and Messages freezing should take a look at this as well. It might help a little.
(For this to work, you must be the Administrator on the computer. If you're not, you'll have to ask the Administrator to do it for you. By default accounts on Windows XP are administrators.)
First things first, go to your Start Menu and open up Control Panel. Near the bottom of the screen, you should be able to see an icon for "Windows Firewall".
Double click that icon and you should be able to see the Windows Firewall Control Panel. If Windows Firewall is disabled, read no further, the rest of this post wont be able to help you.
First and foremost, check to see if the "Disallow Exceptions" check box is checked. If this is the case, the first think you must do, is uncheck it. Once you have done this, click on the "Exceptions" tab up the top.
Second things second, we need to see if BYOND is already allowed in the exceptions list. If you already see both "BYOND" and "Dream Seeker" stop reading here. This tutorial wont help you. If however, you see one or the other, read on.
From that screen shot, you can see I don't have any exceptions for BYOND allowed. So now we're going to add them. Click on the Add Program button and another little popup should appear. This popup will be filled with commonly used programs found on your computer (most not in need of exceptions...).
You'll have to add "BYOND", "Dream Seeker" and if you plan on hosting "Dream Daemon" to your exceptions list. "Dream Maker" doesn't need them, so we can ignore it.
After you have done so, your Exceptions list should look something like this:
If you follow the above steps and you still can't get the pager to completely login. Then please read on. Note: Don't do this unless the above steps haven't worked for you.
Windows Firewall is pretty picky about allowing program exceptions as we have just learned. Sometimes, it really likes to mess with you, but luckily there is a method around that.
The next thing we're going to do, is allow a specific port for the BYOND Pager to connect to BYOND with. Click on the "Add Ports" button.
Now if you're behind a router, you'll have to have this port forwarded there as well. If you know an uncommonly used TCP forwarded port on your router, use that. If you aren't behind a router, do continue uninterrupted.
The "Add Port" window isn't all that flash. It contains two text boxes and two radio buttons. One text box says "Name". You can choose your own name, but for the sake of consistence, I'm going with "BYOND Port". And the other says "port". Now if I recall correctly (please correct me if I'm mistaken) the default port for the pager is 2000. So that's the port we're going to put in the port box. The selected radio button should be "TCP". We're going to leave that alone.
From here, we press the "OK" button. Now the "BYOND Port" exception should also be listed in our list of exceptions. From here on, we press any "Apply" and "Ok" buttons we find until we have closed the Windows Firewall Control Panel.
Next we open our BYOND Pager and attempt to Login. If it works now, good stuff! Disregard the rest of this post. If it doesn't, we still have one more thing to do.
Click on the "File" menu, then click on the "Advanced" tab. From here, you should see a field called "Pager Port". This is where we're going to input our pager port from the Windows Firewall Exception.
Press the "Ok" button. Right click the pager icon in the start menu and click "Close". Then relaunch the pager.
If all goes according to plan, BYOND should now be fully functional though Windows Firewall.
(Note: Windows Firewall might be only one of several things causing your pager to fail. This tutorial in no way promises a perfectly working pager upon completion.)