I have an ActiveX that uses "outbound port 22 (ssh)" to talk to a gateway for credit card services.
It's been working for couple of years with no problems. All of a sudden the port got blocked.

After I uninstalled all the Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, and firewalls on this windows XP machine, and then stopped Windows own Firewall, I could not get the port opened up (unblocked) again.

Finally, I restored Windows from a Restore point from couple of days before the blockage. That worked well for couple of days.
Then it got blocked again. This time, the System Restore doesn't even work!!

Maybe some program on that machine got an automatic update and closed the port?
Or could it be the ISP blocking the port ? I can only speculate.

Any idea on how I can go about this, would be very much appreciated. Thank you in advance,.