Transferring a PowerPoint Presentation with Music to Another PC

Someone who created a PowerPoint presentation with photos and music for a Christmas party told me that the music wasn't playing when she put her presentation on a CD and then transferred the CD to a laptop. I discovered first that the music would need to be inserted as sound files rather than by using "Play audio CD track" when inserting the music into the PowerPoint Presentation. Once I found a Windows Media Player playlist on her system that pointed to the relevant music files in WMA format under her My Documents\My Music folder, I was able to reinsert the music as sound files and then use PowerPoint's "Package for CD" feature to put the presentation on a CD with the music included, which allowed the presentation to work as intended from the laptop.

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Adding Firewall Rules to a Windows XP Professional System via the Command Line

I needed to test access to a website from another location. I had installed AnalogX's proxy server software, Proxy, on a Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 system at another location and had also installed OpenSSH for Windows on the same system. But I hadn't configured Windows XP's firewall software on that system to allow me to access the HTTP or Socks proxy services on the system from a remote location. So I could connect to the system via SSH, start the proxy software from the command line interface, but I couldn't access the Socks proxy service, which I had configured to listen on port 56080 nor the HTTP proxy service, which I had configured to listen on port 56588 (see AnalogX Proxy for information on how to configure AnalogX's proxy software to listen on alternative ports).

Fortunately, you can modify the Windows XP firewall configuration from the command line. I entered the following command to add a firewall opening for TCP port 56080 (you will see an "OK" when the command is completed). After "portopening", you specify the protocol, i.e. "TCP", "UDP", or "All" for both, then the port number, then a name of your choosing. Unless you specify otherwise, the port will be opened so that any IP address can access it, i.e. anyone in the world who can access the system can access the port. So you might want to add the "scope" parameter to the command as well. You can issue the command netsh firewall set portopening to see all of the options.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>netsh firewall set portopening TCP 56080 Proxy
Ok.

To specify that only certain IP addresses would be allowed access to the port, which is certainly desireable for any proxy services, you can use a command like the following instead.

netsh firewall set portopening protocol = TCP port = 56080 name = Proxy mode = ENABLE
          scope = CUSTOM addresses =
	            157.60.0.1,172.16.0.0/16,10.0.0.0/255.0.0.0,LocalSubnet

If the immediately above example was used, then 157.60.0.1 could access the port as could three specific subnets, the last of which is the subnet for any systems on the LAN.

After opening the appropriate firewall rule, I then started the proxy program from the command line.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>"\program files\proxy\proxy"

To verify that the system was actually listening on the port I expected I used the netstat and find commands.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>netstat -a | find "56080"
  TCP    HomeGarden:56080    HomeGarden:0        LISTENING

To verify the firewall rules have been updated appropriately as well, you can use the netsh firewall show portopening command.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>netsh firewall show portopening

Port configuration for Domain profile:
Port   Protocol  Mode     Name
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1900   UDP       Enable   SSDP Component of UPnP Framework
2869   TCP       Enable   UPnP Framework over TCP

Port configuration for Standard profile:
Port   Protocol  Mode     Name
-------------------------------------------------------------------
21599  TCP       Enable   SSH
56080  TCP       Enable   Proxy
1900   UDP       Enable   SSDP Component of UPnP Framework
2869   TCP       Enable   UPnP Framework over TCP
3389   TCP       Enable   Remote Desktop

When you want to disable the rule you can use the same command as the one you used to enable the firewall rule, but put "disable" at the end of it.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>netsh firewall set portopening TCP 56080 Proxy disable
Ok.

You can verify the rule is no longer there with the "show portopening" option again.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>netsh firewall show portopening

Port configuration for Domain profile:
Port   Protocol  Mode     Name
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1900   UDP       Enable   SSDP Component of UPnP Framework
2869   TCP       Enable   UPnP Framework over TCP

Port configuration for Standard profile:
Port   Protocol  Mode     Name
-------------------------------------------------------------------
21599  TCP       Enable   SSH
1900   UDP       Enable   SSDP Component of UPnP Framework
2869   TCP       Enable   UPnP Framework over TCP
3389   TCP       Enable   Remote Desktop

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