[weedahoe]

Or you can also go to your Task Manager and kill

MDM.exe
rapimgr.exe
wcescomm.exe

Then reboot and if AS doesnt start with your PC, then go ahead and start it and connect the device to see what you get. Also, XPs firewall as well as 3rd party firewalls will block it. To test that and not mess with your firewall configurations, reboot XP and boot into Safe Mode with Networking, once it is loaded try to connect to AS and see what you get. If you can (but couldnt earlier) then it is a firewall issue. If you still cannot then it is not a f/w issue.