I have ended up with a combination of approaches.  I have allowed mercury.exe and the ports used for IMAP and SMTP access.  I don't know if allowing the ports is required and didn't think to have testing capabiltity readily available to test. 

The only other issue was a firewall block of rsync.exe which is associated with the def updating of ClamAV.  A firewall block notification called that to my attention.  All seems normal since rsync was allowed.

I have just discovered the windows firewall is off on the PC running Mercury (Win7).  I wonder if when I first set up

Mercury I ran into problems with the firewall so left it off (that was a long time ago).  There are only a couple of ports being forwarded through the router so perhaps I thought I didn't need it.  I am hoping for some thoughts about whether to turn it on and if so, how I would go about determining the firewall rules

needed for Mercury functionality.

Edit:  Never mind!  I finally noticed the "Add another program" button.  Mercury is added, we'll see what happens.

Hi Brian,

I never turned the Firewall off. There should be no problem as long as you ensure (if Windows doesn't automatically), that Mercury and his Modules are allowed to access the public network and may be accessed from Internet. You max do this by adding Mercury to (sorry - have german Windows so directly translated) "Adding program or feature to Firewall" in the controls of the firewall.

bye    Olaf

Thanks Olaf.  I have a problem with allowing Mercury though; it isn't "installed".  It was copied to this machine.  The question now is:  Can I run the Mercury installer over top of the existing install without affecting anything (like Pegasus Mail will)?

Can't you simply allow incoming ports for your SMTP, POP3, IMAP protocols? In its default state the Windows firewall will allow all outgoing connections and block all incoming. You just need to allow the incoming traffic. No need for an application rule?

Hi Brian,

should be possible, because you may add any program. But from that point it is difficult for me to explain the steps (due to german Windows). I'll try it but my translation may be bad:

• at the menue I allready talked about you have a list of programms
• above the list there is a Button <change adjustment>
• on clicking you may choose another button at the end of the list <choose another program>
• there will be a windows with all installed software. Beneath the list is a path and you may <search>
• point to programfile of mercury - perhaps both mercury.exe and loader.exe.
• choose public net if windows didn't automatically

Hope this helps

    Olaf