One thing software firewalls can protect against is malicious content of websites you are currently browsing. For example, 'drive-by' downloads of spyware. These sometimes come from an advertiser on an otherwise trusted website.

That's antivirus/antispyware. If firewall software has that feature, it's getting bloated and going outside its purpose.

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I was under the impression that a) antispyware solutions don't actually prevent your PC from being infected, they just try to clean up afterwards, and b) A/Vs are focussed on viruses rather than spyware. If these two impressions are accurate, there is a hole in your defences if you have nothing which prevents drive-by spyware infections.

There are loads of firewalls, both hardware and software, which use deep packet inspection to control such things. It is a perfectly normal enterprise-level firewall feature.

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I was under the impression that a) antispyware solutions don't actually prevent your PC from being infected, they just try to clean up afterwards

No, a lot of the AS software out there has resident checking as well. Spybot uses the Tea-timer, while Ad-Aware runs constantly as a service these days. Spybot and Spywareblaster also immunize your computer against loading specific sites/links. If you keep them up-to-date, that is.

and b) A/Vs are focussed on viruses rather than spyware.

Also no, as some spyware out there acts as a Trojan/Worm, so that's also caught by your AV software.

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No, a lot of the AS software out there has resident checking as well. Spybot uses the Tea-timer, while Ad-Aware runs constantly as a service these days. Spybot and Spywareblaster also immunize your computer against loading specific sites/links. If you keep them up-to-date, that is.
...

That's a useful tip - I've just reinstalled spybot to include the tea-time component. Thanks. I'm not sure how much of the protection will work with my browser (Opera) since it seems focused towards IE, but at least the domain blacklist should work.

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Back to topic.
Any hints to solve Peter's problem?

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I completely switched my Belkin to Ubuntu Server with IPTABLES handling my IP masquarding and I am still having problems. I think we can rule out firewall. I am not running any software firewalls nor do I have a antivirus running on this machine.

Im going to try and run it off my linux server now that I have it running.

I've installed the linux client 5.10.8 and amazingly I can connect through the RPC protocol on my windows machine to the server! (The same machine that cant seem to connect to projects). So I am now participating in some projects however im running it on a dual 3.02 Ghz Xeon that is in a 1U enclosure and its rather noisy to be running the CPU's at 100% all the time hehe oh well I'll have to figure out a way to put the server in a closet space or something. Is there any ports i have to forward to get BOINC to run on my windows machine behind a firewall? I'd still like to run jobs on my windows machine. Im just going to try downloading the 32bit version and see what that does.

Is there any ports i have to forward to get BOINC to run on my windows machine behind a firewall? I'd still like to run jobs on my windows machine.

Absolutely no ports are needed to be open to run BOINC. Only port 80 outgoing; but that's not a port forward, and if that was blocked you wouldn't be able to use a web browser...

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OK I almost completely solved the problem and I am sharing my findings for the spirit of science ;-). I went into the C:program filesBOINC folder and listed all the exe files in there running and compared it to what is being executed in startup.
After realizing BOINC is setup kinda in 2 parts, the RPC client and the server I wanted to investigate that the server was even starting.

According to msconfig.exe there are 2 BOINC files running out of the 'common startup group'

"C:Program FilesBOINCboincmgr.exe" /s
"C:Program FilesBOINCboinctray.exe"

After seeing that only 2 of the 4 exe files were actually being started from the common startup group wanted to manually start "C:Program FilesBOINCboinc.exe" it started up kinda how I expected it, it brought up dos looking console window and began its initialization process which was very similar to the linux version. I than ran "C:Program FilesBOINCboincmgr.exe" and made sure I was connected to the local host which connected fine just like in the past however, only till now I could actually originate connection to projects from my windows PC.

So my question now is why isnt the server starting automaticly by default as a result of running the installation scripts from "http://boincdl.ssl.berkeley.edu/dl/boinc_5.10.41_windows_x86_64.exe".

Right out of the BOX boinc_5.10.30_windows_x86_64.exe does not work. If there are any developers please verify this with me.

Now I gotta figure out how to get those cool little gif's of my progress. Can anyone help me with that?

**I just realized that the file I downloaded "http://boincdl.ssl.berkeley.edu/dl/boinc_5.10.30_windows_x86_64.exe"
actually reports 5.10.41
"http://web.tampabay.rr.com/baddawgie0/images/1.png" there is some discrepancy in the version numbers here.

@Peter R.
If you installed as a shared user that is close to the expected behavior. boincmgr.exe is supposed to start the client (boinc.exe) if it is not already running. boinctray.exe is for supporting suspending when the user is active. Nothing else should be in the common startup group.

If you installed as a single user then boinctray should be in the common startup and boincmgr should be in the user's startup group. If you installed as a service boinctray will still be in the common startup group but boincmgr may be in either or none of the startup groups.

I get my signature graphics from http://boincstats.com you do not have to sign up there to get it although there are advantages.

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BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8

@Peter R.
If you installed as a shared user that is close to the expected behavior. boincmgr.exe is supposed to start the client (boinc.exe) if it is not already running. boinctray.exe is for supporting suspending when the user is active. Nothing else should be in the common startup group.

If you installed as a single user then boinctray should be in the common startup and boincmgr should be in the user's startup group. If you installed as a service boinctray will still be in the common startup group but boincmgr may be in either or none of the startup groups.

I get my signature graphics from http://boincstats.com you do not have to sign up there to get it although there are advantages.

Wow Keck those are some impressive stats. Thank you I found the link to my stats gif but right now its pretty dinky so I'd rather wait ;).

I think I did install BOINC as shared users, either way, BOINCMGR.exe is failing to start BOINC.exe automaticly. I'll reinstall as a service and that should solve it. As of right now I have to manually start BOINC.exe before I start the BOINCMGR.exe and that seems to work for me.

Thanks again guys! I got like 25 computers online with me.