Home

Disabling/Adding exceptions to the Firewall in Windows XP

Mon, 11/17/2008 - 16:40

The Windows firewall prevents unwanted connections to your computer, keeping it safe on the internet. System administrators who need remote access to your computer might need you to disable the firewall, or add some exceptions to enable remote access. This article gives a step-by-step guide with screenshots explaining how to do this.

Following this tutorial has security implications - you should only do so if you have been instructed to by your system administrator.

The first thing to be done is to open the Windows Firewall dialog - this is detailed in Step 1. The second step will show you how to add an exception to the firewall, while the third step will show you how to disable it completely - in general, this is not recommended and can potentially put your computer at risk.

First, click on the Start button and open the Control Panel.

Control Panel

Next, click on the "Security Centre" icon

Securtiy Centre

Then click on "Windows Firewall". Once you've done this, the Windows Firewall settings window will open, and you should go to either Step 2 or Step 3 as instructed by your System Administrator.

 

After following Step 1, this step shows you how to add exceptions to the firewall. Your System Administrator should give you :

  • The port number of the exception
  • The name of the exception
  • The protocol of the exception

To start, in the Windows Firewall window click on the 'Exceptions' tab:

In the Exceptions tab, click on the 'Add Port' button:

In the window that pops-up, enter the name,port number and protocol as given to you by your system administrator. Then click on 'OK', and click on 'OK' again when your are back to the Windows Firewall window. That's it, the exception has been added and you shouldn't need to do anything else.

After following Step 1, this step shows you how to entirely disable the firewall. This is a security risk - only do it if you have specifically been instructed to do so by your system administrator.

Note that depending on your Network settings, changing the Firewall setting might be disallowed - in that case, the options will be grayed out. If this is the case, inform your system administrator.

To disable the firewall, you simply need to select 'Off' and then click on OK :