Belkin router Help

[Shooty*]

Hi all,
I've had a Belkin F5D7632 UK for a while now, and until this weekend, it has been great.
I've got the old firmware. I can't find anywhere to DL the October 05 firmware (the last version, far as I can tell) as Belkin's site is A) useless and B) seems to have discontinued support.

Anyway, my woes are port-forwarding based. As I say, it's never been a problem till now.

This last week, I installed Vista. I set a static IP in TCP/IP 4 rather and disabled v6 in the network setting properties for my wifi card. cmd/ipconfig /all shows that the static IP has taken (it has the word "preferred" after it... not sure what that means).

DHCP is disabled on the router as all my computers have static IPs. There is no security, but I have mac address filtering on.

I'm trying to port forward. I have done this for years, and know how to do it, but I cannot get it to work now for love nor money. I have changed static IPs to see if it was some weird glitch: nothing. I have tried two computers to see if it's some kind of installation fault: no change.

I've tried using BitTorrent, Emule, UTorrent and Azureus. NONE of them can pick up any connections at all. I have tried port tests on websites, and they all time out.

I have disabled zone Alarm and relied on the router firewall: Nothing.

So... I can't tell if my router is to blame, or something else. I KNOW I've set the rules right, so can't explain why connections aren't coming through. Windows firewall is off. Windows Defender is on, but I can't see how that would harm things.

On Belkin Routers, Virtual Server is a sub-menu under Firewall... Do I need to have the firewall enabled for the port forwarding to kick in? (i.e. does it allow all ports to be open if the firewall is disabled) or should it work regardless?

[Shooty*]

Update: Spookily, I have now found the firmware update. Weird. I'm betting it won't help though, so advice still appreciated.

[adam1701]

try using dmz, to find whether it is the router or the pc...

[Shooty*]

OK, Cool.

If I put it in the DMZ, then providing I still have zone alarm running on the machine itself, that's OK, innit?

[kidzer]

Yeah, ZA will still provide its protection, it'll just have more connection attempts etc to deal with.

[Shooty*]

Well, DMZ helped a little.

I think it's ISP throttling, perhaps.

[Shooty*]

Update: Tried plugging the computer into the router LAN port, and emule seemed to work a treat overnight. Better than with the wifi connection, at any rate.

Weird. So perhaps my old PCI wifi card is past it/ not fully vista capable/ crap.