No Receive, Transmit OK

[W4ATL]

I experienced an unusual problem with Windows 11 and Thetis (but it could happen to any software running with your SDR.) I had my normal QSOs in the morning with Thetis and my 7000DLE MKII when I powered down Thetis and shut off the radio. I left my computer and Thetis up and running. I came back into the shack in the afternoon, turned on the radio and powered up Thetis. Thetis would connect but with no RX audio and no panadapter. Importing a good database did not restore operation. Transmitting was fine, both on CW and SSB. Just no receive.

Some email chats with another user led me to check to see if the Windows 11 Firewall was blocking packets from the radio. Sure enough, when I turned off the Firewall the radio came back to life! What happened!?! I discovered that my network interface had changed from Private to Public sometime during the day. When I changed the adapter back to private the radio worked fine.

It is not obvious how to change the network connection Properties from Public to Private. You need to right click on the network icon in the lower right. Select Network and Internet Settings, then check the Properties. If it has changed to Public, click on Properties to make it Private.

During install of Thetis rules are setup for your network connection to allow the RX audio packets to pass through the Firewall. If you are behind a router and on your private shack local area network you should be safe to leave it Private. Public is intended for connecting to a public WiFi access point. I think Microsoft feels that you would be better served to have it changed to Public all the time for better protection, I wish they would alert me to these changes instead of just doing them. Or how about not changing it at all.

[W1AEX]

Yep, this problem was a mystery to me a couple of years ago on a Windows 7 machine. Same symptoms where I could transmit with Thetis but could not receive. On that particular computer the exclusive static IP subnet that was only connected to the ANAN was classified as an "unidentified network" and was locked on PUBLIC with none of the many fixes out there having any effect on my attempts to change it to PRIVATE. Since this was a desktop computer that I never planned to lug down to the local coffee shop's public network I ended up altering the firewall characteristics for PUBLIC networks to be identical to the rule set that is used for PRIVATE networks and that worked fine. It sure had me puzzled for a couple of days!

73, Rob W1AEX

[ramdor]

Sorry for the delayed reply chaps.

There is a button in the setupform->General, called 'Firewall Check'. When thetis is run as admin and this button is clicked it removes all firewall rules related to Thetis.exe and re-adds them back in. I have just added the Private profile as well, which now mimics the rules that are added by the installer. Next release will have the private profile modified as well.

73

[Ernie]

Sherman, I never leave Thetis up when the radio is off. Something gets screwed up in it. This is fairly repeatable. Always close Thetis and you will not have this problem. YMMV..

W2FMU

[W1AEX]

There is a button in the setupform->General, called 'Firewall Check'. When thetis is run as admin and this button is clicked it removes all firewall rules related to Thetis.exe and re-adds them back in. I have just added the Private profile as well, which now mimics the rules that are added by the installer. Next release will have the private profile modified as well.

73

Hi Richie,

The embedded "Firewall Check" utility in Thetis is an excellent tool and it would have made quick work of confirming that the firewall was the problem back when this issue occurred. When I was troubleshooting this and finally got around to checking the firewall rules I found that Windows 7 had created dozens of "Block" rules for Thetis.exe. When I removed them all and created an "Allow" rule, each time Thetis was started it automatically applied the "Public" policies that were in place and created another Block rule for Thetis.exe. It was relentless until I gave up on trying to re-classify the Anan subnet as "Private" and edited the "Public" rule set for that subnet that was exclusively connected to the ANAN to the same rules used by a Private subnet. The crazy thing is that Windows left PowerSDR mRX PS alone and never created any block rules for it!

Fortunately, that computer is now retired and I have no such issue with Windows 11!

Thanks for creating the "Firewall Check" utility as it can help to eliminate the firewall as an issue for anyone who is dealing with connection issues.

73, Rob W1AEX