turn off firewall?

You can do it in the domain group policy.

Is the XP machine joined to a domain? It sounds to me like either a domain GPO or the local security policy on your computer is restricting access to change the firewall settings. If this is the case, administrative access to your system may be a mute point ... unless you want to go registry hacking.

I read your post wrong. If you have admin access to the SBS server .. which tells me you probably have a domain setup .. run GPEDIT, (i you may need download the tool from Microsoft). Review the details of the default domain policy and any enabled, and enforced Group Policies. My guess is that you will find that one of them is turning the firewall on and disabling access to turn it off
.... thats what i did at my company for security reasons.

If its a group policy applied on the server then you DONT want to be running GPEDIT (thats for local policies and group plocies will take precidence).

You need to find the setting in the group policy settings on the server and chnage them

see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/872769

yep im connected to a domain.

I cant seem to find the gpedit installer. The only one I can locate is for sp1.

So how do I do this in the domain group policy.

Thx KCTs, i put the wrong command in there. Download the group policy editor from microsoft download center if its not already on your server :D

If this isn't controlled thru GP, add or change this registry key:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters\FirewallPolicy\StandardProfile\EnableFirewall
to "0" (zero) DWORD
to turn firewall off.

>> So how do I do this in the domain group policy. <<

see see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/872769 which I referred to earlier !!

C:\WINDOWS\system32\gpmc.msc
This is the group policy editor. I just forget if its there by default or not, i know you can get it from MS downloads if not.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
read http://support.microsoft.com/kb/872769 which I referred to earlier !!
Don't go chnaging the registry - the GPO will re-write it anyway "

Ok.

Rob will was much more specific and better to understand.

I logged onto the server.

Group Policy management > Small business server windows Firewall > details.

Then I disabled all settings.

then on the client i did gpupdate  /force

Thanks SWHosting.
Cheers !
--Rob