Recently one of our reader Sarfaraj Khan emailed us his problem that he is unable to turn on windows firewall. He cannot enable or disable the windows firewall as the options of turning on and off of the firewall were grayed out as shown in the image below (you can click to zoom).

This type of problem occurs when your computer has been infected by some virus which you may have removed from your computer but some infections caused by the virus remains.

Let’s find out how can you resolve this problem of firewall turn on off options disabled

Fix:

The viruses normally create these registry entries which disable and grey out the turn on off controls in windows firewall.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsFirewall\DomainProfile]
"EnableFirewall"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsFirewall\StandardProfile]
"EnableFirewall"=dword:00000000

>> If values of the above keys is set to 0, it will disable and it grays out the firewall controls so it cannot be changed.

>> If the value of the above keys is set to 1, it will enable it and grays out the firewall controls so it cannot be changed.

So, in order to fix the problem you would need to delete these registry keys written above and restart you computer to see the effect.

The step by step procedure to enable the disabled options of firewall are as follows

For Windows XP Home Edition and Professional Edition

1. Open Start Menu >> Run, type regedit and press Enter key

2. Navigate To the following path

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Policies \ Microsoft \ WindowsFirewall

3. Make sure to export and backup WindowsFirewall key and close registry

You can also control this through gpedit.msc in Windows XP Professional

1. Open Start Menu >> Run, type gpedit.msc and press Enter key

2. Navigate to the following path

Computer Configuration >> Administrative Templates >> Network >> Network Connections >> Windows Firewall >> Standard Profile

3. Close Group Policy Editor

4. That’s it done, you may need to restart your computer

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2010 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.

In this post, we are going to share with you the method to selectively set application permission through windows firewall to use Internet connection.

Two days back I faced some problem in publishing articles on my blog because of some FTP application error. I realized that there was something blocking the FTP application. Then I disabled the firewall and tried it. It worked! But disabling firewall can be a threat to computer. So I had to find a way out to un-block the applications I need to work on.

Lets see the details steps to configure the firewall in two easy steps.

Fix:

For selectively blocking and unblocking any application, you need to follow these simple steps.

1. Go to Control Panel > Windows Firewall. On this screen ensure that the fire-wall is turned on and the check box for don’t allow exception is not checked as seen below.

2. Now click on Exceptions tab. This will take you to Exceptions list of Programs and services. This list has all the programs and services which are not blocked by the firewall. If you want to block or block any application from using Internet, then un-check the application which you want to block the application. This means that this application will not by-pass the firewall.

If you want to allow the Internet usage to the application, just check the check-box against it, press OK button.

Note: If the application is not listed in this list, you can add it to the list by using Add Program button at the bottom of this list window.

Isn’t it really easy?

Leave your comments and suggestions below.

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2010 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.