A drunken dance with BlockPort

[Syrinx]

Where to start? I'm weird, there we go! I like to use SBIE options as redundancies where possible including as an anti-exe inside with Start Run Access etc. Among these are BlockPort rules which are redundant due to firewall rules.

Well I had gotten most of my boxes working well without problems but one particular game just would not go online or connect and was about as jerky as me in a fps after 12 beers even in single player...

I'm actually already using a similar setup in all my other boxes including Steam and this was the only thing that had any issues.

As I normally just copy and paste the port list (then remove the spaces) from my firewall rules I was confused as to why BlockPort was causing this. I couldn't find anything to help me via Resource Access Monitor or SBIE Trace so I finally started my own little test routine.

As it turns out these 'outbound' packets that my BlockPort rules were preventing was to myself at 127.0.0.1 and the windows firewall doesn't block these localhost connections so I had no existing rule referencing that port and had not allowed it on my BlockPort=*,# list.


Now at least I know for the future, check localhost connections if using BlockPort shows different results!
Figured I'd share my experience here in case I forget and run into the same issue again down the line or it helps anyone else using BlockPort rules.