Hey Sabrina, try going here... sheilds up
you can test your ports on this site...after you hit proceed you will be taken to another page where the tester is...you can either test individual ports or test all of them...if you are running a firewall the test will give you a stealth reading...which is to say that no one can connect to your computer...anything other than that and your cd-rom tray will open...the site explains what it is doing and why...to test all go to "all service ports" to test individual ports go to "user custom port probe" ...if you would like info on any port and it's function go to "port info"...assuming you have winxp I will leave this link to their database for the built in firewall... microsoft internet firewalls faq ...ok to off the firewall in wnxp sp2...1. Click Start, click Run, type Firewall.cpl, and then click OK.
2. On the General tab, click Off (not recommended), and then click OK.
now you will need another firewall...I recommend zonealarm ...this is just the firewall and is free...after install it will configure your programs to allow them onto the internet...if you need to change which programs have permission to connect to the net right click on the zonealarm icon in the system tray(beside the clock)and restore zonealarms control center...go to program control and then programs you will see a list of programs that are needing connection to the net...you will notice that there are x's and checks and question marks on some of these programs...the X means blocked ...the checkmark means allowed and the question mark means it will ask for permission...I hope this helps...