I haven’t played backgammon in a while, so I thought I’d give it a go this morning at Gammon Empire. I clicked on my desktop icon. A small window progress meter appeared right away, saying it was looking for updates. Very soon after that, I had an error message, saying: Error: couldn't connect to server. Please check your internet connection and firewall settings.

I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I don’t have any firewall active and I disabled my antivirus software because it’s such a pain in the ass.

I tried looking at my internet explorer internet security options and don’t see any obvious problems, but to be honest, I’d be just working on trial and error there. Next I tried going to the GammonEmpire site and clicked on play for free. Very quickly I had the same error message again.

The Gammon Empire site has several links to their support service. I don’t see any FAQ’s or online info, but there is an email link, so I have just sent them an email with my problem.

In the meantime, while impatiently waiting for a reply, I start noodling around in my start menu, looking for any security software that I was unaware of. Sure enough, under Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, there is a Security Center. Duh. Quick, send another email saying “never mind!”.

Sure enough, Windows XP Home has a built in firewall and it was set to “On”. So, here goes my patented trial and error PC operation… I clicked on the Windows Firewall icon at the bottom of the window. There are three tabs in the next window, General, Exceptions and Advanced.

There was a nice link to the HP Help and Support Center that explains it all pretty well:

“Allowing a program to communicate through Windows Firewall

To help provide security for your computer, Windows Firewall blocks unsolicited requests to connect to your computer. Because the firewall restricts communication between your computer and the Internet, you might need to adjust settings for some programs that prefer an open connection to the Internet. You can make an exception for these programs, so that they can communicate through the firewall. “

I was able to add the Gammon Empire program to my list of exceptions and still leave the firewall on. It was really very easy. Just a matter of clicking on the exceptions tab, Choose the Add button and then browse for the Gammon Empire program. Two clicks later and I’m logging in to Gammon Empire for some play for fun backgammon.

I don’t know what changed between the last time I tried to log in and this time, but apparently, a firewall setting changed somewhere along the way. Anyway, it was an easy fix and one you may need at some point in your online gaming travels. Now that I think of it, earlier this month, my daughter was suddenly having trouble accessing i-Tunes and AIM. I remember that a firewall setting fixed that problem as well. I’d guess that one of those automatic windows updates changed some security settings on us recently.

As a post script, I received a response by email from Gammon Empire in the time it took me to write this post. That's less than a half hour for response time. Very Good!

This page was last updated on January 8th, 2007.