Product: Norman Security Suite, Norman Personal Firewall
Module: n/a
Operating system(s): Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Vista
Date published: 13 December 2007
Date updated: n/a

Problem description

Several popular games include multiplayer functionality. Norman Personal Firewall (NPF) will detect when such games attempt to connect to the Internet, and displays a pop-up dialog to the user. However, as many of these games run in fullscreen mode, they will prevent the pop-up window to obtain focus, and as a result the pop-up will not be visible for the user. In such cases the multiplayer functionality will not work, and/or the game might freeze or crash.

Problem solution

Alternative 1

The best solution is to create a firewall rule for the game executable before launching the game. This can be done from Norman Security Suite | Personal Firewall | Configure | Rule Editor.

Alternative 2

In some cases the following alternative solution will work:

  1. Disable NPF temporarily (Norman Security | Personal Firewall | Disable) 
  2. Start the game (or application). 
  3. Connect to the multiplayer game (or the server). 
  4. Press Alt+Tab to go back to the Windows desktop 
  5. Enable NPF (Norman Security | Personal Firewall | Enable) 
  6. NPF should now give you a pop-up dialog where you can confirm that the game/application is allowed to connect to the Internet 
  7. Alt+Tab back into the game/application.