I just found out that Norton Internet Security seems to fake a server running on port 80. Whatever that may be good for (probably should've stayed with zonealarm).

Maybe the purpose of the norton shit is something honeypot-like?

I think this advice is a little on the short side. Actually, you have to decide if you want your Helma server to be reachable from outside. If so, run it at 80, since this is the well-known port for a web server, make it reachable from the outside (maybe you have to configure a router, maybe (hopefully?) a firewall), maybe set up a domain name for it.

If not, choose any port, but make the hell sure it's not visible from anywhere else. You don't want anyone to snoop at your private diary or whatever you're keeping in there, right?

By the way, if you're on Windows and want a firewall that's easy to configure but only does what it's told (instead of making silly assumptions like you want it to set up a fake web server on port 80), have a look at the one from TinySoft. It pissed me off mightily when my Win98 box wouldn't boot at all beacause my ethernet cable wasn't plugged in properly and the Tiny firewall had a problem with that, but apart from that, I find it quite nice.

helma was running fine as soon as i turned off norton system protection. this f***ing Symantec thing seems to be designed to protect the user from himself. but don't want to throw it away right now since i PAYED for it! ;)

playing around, I found out that you can grant access for unsuspicious port numbers, but seemingly never on 80 & 8080. so i'm using an entirely different port now, and helma is running happily.