How can I run Bitcoin-QT client behind a restrictive firewall using a putty tunnel? I am on Windows machine on a network that is closed for all incoming packets and outgoing packets only work for port 80.

In the network I have access to a Linux via SSH that is open for in and out access.

I want to run the wallet client Bitcoin-QT on the restricted Windows machine, I setup a tunnel using D9050 to the open Linux and then I told Bitcoin-QT that there is socks proxy on localhost port 9050.

The client runs and starts to show connections (which is doesn't show without the tunnel) but it doesn't start downloading the block chain :(

Help ?
The easiest way to make this work would be to install cygwin on your windows machine, specifically ssh client package.

Then from a cygwin shell, run ssh -D 8080 user@linuxHost.

Now you can point the qt client to localhost:8080 as the socks proxy.