gnus on XP

[notbob]

Howdy.  emacs noob, here.

I'm occasionally stuck using a suck XP box instead of my beloved 
Slackware.  Being a CLI freak, I d/l'd emacs to use gnus.  But, so far 
no joy.  I ran runemacs.exe and even addpm.exe.  I also created a 
C:\.emacs and C:\.gnus file.  In .gnus, I put:

(setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "us.Usenet-News.net"))

I get:

Loading gnus-ml...done
Loading byte-opt...done
Opening nntp server on us.Usenet-News.net...
Denied server
Opening nntp server on us.Usenet-News.net...failed
gnus-select-newsgroup: Couldn't open server
exchange-point-and-mark: No mark set in this buffer

....after showing my newsserver in the stat bar and even offering up 
alt.os.linux.slackware newsgroup and I selecting it.

At no time am I promted for a username or password, which my service 
requires.  I'm reading emacs and news and faqs as fast as I can and have 
searched google and groups (to no avail), but sure could use some 
advice.  Also, is there a good emacs/gnus irc chat room?

Thank you
nb