FTP and Activesync

[shmokes]

I commonly FTP between my PC and my Xbox on my internal home network.  Sometimes it simply won't connect, in spite of the fact that I can ping my Xbox.  It took a lot of time, but I finally figured out that when my wife's PocketPC is plugged into its docking station I am unable to use FTP (regardless of what FTP program I'm using).  Does anyone know why it would do this?  Does Activesync use the FTP ports to make its connection to the Pocket PC device?  Unplugging the device immediately gives me access to my Xbox again via FTP, no reboot or anything required.

[scooter]

You could try running "netstat -an" from the command line and see what ports ActiveSync is using.  A better tool to use might be "fport," which can be found here, which will also tie open ports to running processes on your machine.

I assume that the PocketPC is plugged into the box that you are trying to FTP from ("my PC" in the above scenario)?  If that's the case, it shouldn't be a problem to have multiple FTP sessions active at the same time.

Is this an XP machine?  Do you have any custom firewall rules set up?

[shmokes]

I'll try that when my wife gets home with her Pocket PC.

Yeah, the PocketPC is connected to the PC and I'm trying to FTP from my PC to the Xbox.

It is an XP Pro machine and I don't have any custom firewall settings set up in the Windows XP firewall, but I do have both the PC and Xbox plugged into a Cisco PIX 501 firewall which I use as my router.  But seeing as the PocketPC runs directly to my PC (and not through the Cisco PIX) I'm thinking that the FTP is getting stopped by my PC and not by the external firewall since the external firewall should have no idea whether the PocketPC is connected to my PC's USB port (which is, or course, what determines whether I can or can't FTP out to my Xbox).