Repair Windows Firewall And WMI

The Windows Firewall has seen lots of improvements ever since its first implementation in a Windows operating system (which was Windows XP by the way). The Windows Firewall acts as a first line of defense to protect the computer system from attacks originating from a computer network or the Internet. Tech savvy users usually disable the firewall after installing a more powerful third party solution. Still, lots of users are using the Windows Firewall to protect their computer system.

The first thing that we should make sure before we go ahead and repair the Windows Firewall is to verify that it is indeed turned on and running. To do that open the Windows Control Panel by clicking on the Start Orb in the lower left corner and then on the Control Panel link there.

Depending on the layout of the control Panel users find the Windows Firewall in the Security group, it is named Windows Firewall.

This opens a Control Panel applet. Locate the link Turn Windows Firewall on or off in the left sidebar and click it. The shield icon in front indicates that this requires elevated privileges.

The next screen indicates if the Windows Firewall is turned on in private networks and public network locations.

Third party security suites often recommend to turn off the Windows Firewall to avoid conflicts with their firewall. Make sure you only turn on the firewall if there is no other firewall running.

If the Control Panel applet is not displaying options to turn on or off the firewall, it may be because the Windows Firewall service is not running on the system.

To verify if it is running press Ctrl-R on the keyboard, enter services.msc and hit enter. This opens the Services configuration window. Locate Windows Firewall in the list of services and make sure it says it is Started. Check the Startup Type if it is not. The firewall service needs to be set to automatic startup. The startup type can be changed by double-clicking the entry and selecting Automatic from the list of available startup types.

Lets say you have checked that the Windows Firewall is turned on and running in the system. What if you experience problems related to it? Or, even worse, what if you cannot enable the Windows Firewall.

Repair WMI & Windows Firewall has been designed to repair problems associated with the Windows Firewall.

While helping people with their port forwarding I have found that if the Windows Firewall (which uses WMI) is broken then port forwarding will not work. And also other problems can happen with programs and networking.I made this app to simplify the process for users to get WMI and the Firewall working again.

What does it do? It seems to do a few things, like making sure the Windows Firewall Registry settings are there, or that all dlls and exes are registered on the system.

To use it, users simply press the Start button and wait until the process completes. The program needs to be started with elevated rights, to do that right-click it and select to run as an administrator. The program is available for download at the developer website.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Thursday November 25, 2010 -
Tags:firewall, repair windows firewall, windows firewall, windows software, wmi

Responses so far:

1. Rick says:

   November 25, 2010 at 6:20 pm

   The link for the program seems to be missing; it can be found at: http://www.pcwintech.com/shanes-toolbox (the last program on the page).

   Reply
   • Martin says:

     November 25, 2010 at 7:41 pm

     Thanks, has been added.

     Reply