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.

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.

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 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.