I was port scanning some machines of mine and I got to my XP box and hit a brick wall. This was odd because not too long ago I scanned the same box and it was as open as could be. I started thinking and realized that I installed SP2 since the last scan. This is a test box so the only extras on it are the regular Microsoft updates and Norton AV.

As it turns out the SP2 firewall blocked everything that I threw at it. This is a surprise since it is afterall a Microsoft prodect.

This is mostly to any security experts. Is there a way around the SP2 firewall? I use nmap under windows and got nothing except when running -sT (TCP connect) and then I only get port 25 which I suspect is a false positive. Any suggestions?

what do you mean around it?
you can turn it on or off.
if on you can block everything or set exceptions that allow certain things through the firewall.

It sounds moreso like he's asking if there is any way someone could break thru the firewall... like known vulnerabilities they havn't fixed quite yet. Although I could be off base but thats what I gather he's asking.