Well, there has been issues in the past with the winders firewall which is why I refused to use it. Also, by preventing some outgoing traffic (under defined parameters) you can also see if your computer has been compromised as a dodgy email attachment, for example, may "send" data to a known "naughty address". So by limiting things to inbound only you reduce the effectiveness of the firewall as there are plenty things out there which can can cause problems. So there is a major gripe I have with Winders Firewall.
Now, to the "issues". "Password is incorrect", in either direction when setting up the network, is NOT something being blocked as you could "see" each computer when you looked at the network. You just couldn't access them due to a strange issue with the network itself. Also, exiting the firewall program, not merely disabling it but actually shutting it down completely, made no difference whatsoever, it was like Winders was changng the password seconds after I set it. Now, if it was an issue with Comodo, why do the other two computers on the network, using the same, fully updated, version of Comodo have no issues? Therefore, since the same problem does not exist on two computers (running Win7 Ultimate and Win7 Home Premium) running the same version of the same 3rd party firewall, the firewall cannot realistically be at fault since these two computers would show the same issues.
My thoughts did turn to the AV program, Avira, as being a cause of the problem as it does go a little bit further than being a "pure" AV program. That was why I uninstalled it, and the firewall, on one PC to see if the problem would still be there. The other two are still running the same, fully updated, version of Avira, yet have no issues talking to anything on the network.
So how can it be that changing the setup on ONE computer and leaving the other two with EXACTLY the same setup as the one which had Microsoft Security Essentials installed cures the problem IF the 3rd party firewall was the issue, especially since I have setup home networks before using that very same software on Vista/XP?
I did drop a little hint earlier in this, see if you can spot it. I know one thing that was changing constantly and I have no idea why it suddenly decided to behave. And it had nothing to do with any 3rd party firewall...............