Comments on: Create a Shortcut Icon or Hotkey to Turn Windows 7 / Vista Firewall On or Off

By: Annoyed

Annoyed — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:08:51 +0000

Any idea of how to turn it off with out having permissions for it?
I’m on a highly limited work computer, limited in the since that I am blocked from most things even though the computer is actually meant for our entritaiment -_-
Frankly I won’t care if this pile of junk would get a billion worms and viruses on it, I just want my mIRC to connect but it’s blocked -_-…

I have (finally) access tot he command line, wich might help, but no idea how to use it for this…
I was thinking about manual editing of the registry that has it stored wether or not the firewall is on, if one exists.

I will be very happy for any ideas you might be able to give me here or on e-mail

By: daveuk

daveuk — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:04:31 +0000

One comment – you shouldn’t use “netsh firewall” as it’s the old (XP) netsh firewall context. The new one in Windows Vista is “netsh advfirewall”. The difference being that the “netsh advfirewall” context understands the Vista network profiles (Domain, Private, Public) whereas the old netsh firewall context does not understand the Public profile. If you want to ensure that you are turning the Firewall off for ALL network profiles then you should use “netsh advfirewall set allprofiles state off”.

Also, one of the comments above mentioned disabling the Windows Firewall service. This is a bad idea. You shouldn’t need to disable the service (turning Windows Firewall off using the netsh advfirewall context is enough). By disabling the service you are losing more than just Firewall (IPsec policy is also managed by the Firewall service) and you will lose other protections that are in place while your PC is booting (yes, you need the firewall to protect your machine from unsolicited network traffic while it’s booting).

By: sam gueydan

sam gueydan — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 17:00:18 +0000

I made the firewall icons and they work, very cool…

now– anyway to remind the user that the firewall is down? i was th8inking like changing the background or placing a icon on the desktop with “shield are down”

and change it back when you run the shilds up shortcut….

ok, so im being picky— sue me..(BG)

anyway, thants for the tip….

By: marco

marco — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 01:02:02 +0000

@jd2066
thank’s…

By: jd2066

jd2066 — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:47:08 +0000

@marco: imageres.dll doesn’t exist in Windows XP. You can find similar icons on Windows XP in %SystemRoot%\system32\xpsp2res.dll

By: marco

marco — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:04:12 +0000

%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll

where is the imageres.dll file in WinXP??

Thank You.

By: Ajay@Readerszone.com

Ajay@Readerszone.com — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:53:29 +0000

real good one.

By: ToyangQ

ToyangQ — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:07:54 +0000

nice article.. thanks

By: Shane Conder

Shane Conder — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:40:43 +0000

@Chris James: If you’re at home or in another safe environment, it’s often much easier to play with services with the firewall off than with it on. That’s assuming, of course, your network is firewalled.

I recently had to turn mine off for TVersity to work, even though I allowed connections on the ports it was using.

I also agree with “The Geek” about getting malware… just don’t get it. Vista helps a _ton_ with that, too, with it’s best of breed “nuisance” security — that has a side effect of actually working.

By: Chris James

Chris James — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 16:52:13 +0000

Nice article but why would you ever want to disable your firewall anyway?