hello, i have just siged up for this fourm to ask a ?, i have read every page and have tried every fix, but nothing will work, i am using XP home edition and my isp is AOL, i have just bought this PC frome Dell, nice flat LCD screen..the works..yea...well anyway i have 2 ideas what might be the problem on my PC 1). could a proxy be the problem? becuz i have tried to play Empire Earth II (wich i have bought this PC, just for this 1 game) online, i even opend up ports to allow it, also when i tried to DL an activeX control from AOL, my pc dident do squat, it was like a retarted 24 yearold trying to pout a square into a round hole, it kept trying to get thru but nothing,, i thought it was my anti-virius, nope it was MicroTrend PC Cillin internet security, i replaced that with McAfee internet security, nope, disabeling my firewall, allowing exceptions, all that, when i came across a post in this thred, sombuddy said to download a new version of JAVA, well i tried, and a window poped up saying that a proxy was blocking somthing!!! can this be it 2). i am using AOL secutiry version, WITCH when you try to open its prefrences in the network dir. no advanced button shows up and there is no boxes to place allowed port#'s in, o wait.. make that 3). i disabled my firewall not to long ago and ran LW, but the firewall status was detected, now i tried to go and find if McAfee had one in its prefrences, but there is nothing at all to do with firewalls in my version of McAfee.....can anyone use my information for a soloutin?