gHacks technology news » vista firewall http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:26:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Windows Vista Firewall Control http://www.ghacks.net/2008/08/15/windows-vista-firewall-control/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/08/15/windows-vista-firewall-control/#comments Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:19:26 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=6177 The Windows Vista Firewall is definitely better than the Windows XP Firewall because it is able to control incoming and outgoing connections. If you have to rely on the firewall you might feel that it is missing several features known from desktop firewalls. That’s where Vista Firewall Control comes into play. The free version of this firewall management software comes with reduced functionality but introduces one interesting features: The ability to allow or deny access to the Internet for running applications.

Whenever a application requests a connection to the Internet that is not in the list of applications that have already defined firewall rulesets Vista Firewall Control asks the user if he wants to allow or deny that connection.

That’s a known feature from many desktop firewalls. The options are to configure the application to disable or enable all connections or to allow only incoming or outgoing connections.

windows vista firewall control

The list of applications that already have a ruleset can be displayed and edited or deleted if necessary. The free version of Vista Firewall Control does have several limitations and it would probably be better to download and install a third party Firewall like Comodo instead.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/08/15/windows-vista-firewall-control/feed/ 4 Enable or disable the Windows Firewall in Vista in one click http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/02/enable-or-disable-the-windows-firewall-in-vista-in-one-click/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/02/enable-or-disable-the-windows-firewall-in-vista-in-one-click/#comments Fri, 02 May 2008 08:07:28 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=3986 The Windows Firewall in Windows Vista cannot be quickly disabled or enabled. A user who wants to enable or disable it would have to open the Control Panel and load the Windows Firewall in the Security tab. The option to Turn the Windows Firewall on or off would appear in the menu. That’s not a practicable option if you have to turn it off and on several times a day, maybe every time you switch locations.

Hank (thanks a lot) send a tip via email that explained who to enable or disable the Windows Vista Firewall with a simple shortcut, or better two shortcuts. He was using this approach to disable the firewall at home where a hardware firewall was protecting the PC and to enable it while on the road with his notebook.

To create the shortcuts right-click the desktop in Windows Vista and select to create a new shortcut. Name the first shortcut Firewall OFF and the second Firewall ON. Use the following two commands to enable or disable the firewall.

windows vista firewall shortcut

Windows Vista Firewall OFF:

%systemroot%\System32\netsh.exe firewall set opmode disable

Windows Vista Firewall ON:

%systemroot%\System32\netsh.exe firewall set opmode enable

A click on Firewall OFF would turn the Windows Vista Firewall off immediately and a click on Firewall ON would enable it again. To get rid of the command line window in the background right-click the shortcut and select to run the command minimized like in the screenshot above. The default setting is normal window.

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