Before we can open ports for BitTorrent, we should set the ports that BitTorrent uses. Here is a brief walkthrough on how to do that. Go ahead and open up BitTorrent.

In the menu at the top of your screen, click the View link. Then in the list of options that drops down click the Settings option.

A new window should have poped up that looks like the picture above. There are a few tabs at the top of this window, click the Network tab.

The number in the starting at port box tells BitTorrent where you start looking for open ports. BitTorrent works it's way up from that port number until it finds a port that is open. Every port that BitTorrent has to check takes time. So it would be a good idea to open the port that you enter into the Starting at Port box. Many ISPs block ports in the 6000 range. Please choose a port between 10000 and 60000 then enter it into the Starting at Port box. Then enter that port into the box below.

If you plan on downloading multiple files at the same time via BitTorrent, you need to open up one port for each file. This guide will show you how to open up one port for each file. If you chose to put port 12540 into the Starting at Port box and wanted to have five files going at the same time, you should open ports 12540 to 12544.

Click the Security Center link near the bottom left of the page.

Click the Windows Firewall link near the bottom right of the page.

Remove the checkmark from the Don't allow exceptions checkbox.

We will list a series of lines here that will show you exactly how to setup Windows XP Firewall's firewall for BitTorrent. Go ahead and enter the settings shown below into the Add Port menu.