Vista Firewall, allows outbound connections, here's how to fix.

Mods- I posted this in the OS section of the board, but felt that it would be of use to my fellow HP owners that may (like me) never 'see" the OS side of the board. I only ran across the OS section of the board today due to a post by Night 2004 talking about his troubles with Vista http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=111580



Vista Firewall, allows outbound connections, here's how to fix.

Turn firewall ON, then to set outbound parameters, go into the management panel. Click Start>>Control Panel. Double-click Administrative Tools>>Windows Firewall with Advanced Security.

In the Overview section, click Windows Firewall Properties. You’ll get a dialog box with tabs for the Domain, Private and Public profiles. (The use of profiles will trip some people up.)

When you connect to a network, Vista asks if it is a work, home or public network. Depending on your selection, Vista applies a different security profile. For example, selecting home as your location applies the private profile to your firewall settings.

If you want to block outbound connections for all profiles, you must change the settings on each tab. For “Outbound connections,” select Block. After you set the options for each profile, click Apply and OK.

When you block all outbound transmissions, nothing can reach the Internet. That includes browsers and e-mail programs. Obviously, that’s impractical. However, you can set up rules to allow certain programs to access the Internet. I did so for Internet Explorer.

In the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security window, I clicked Outbound Rules in the left column. That produced a list of rules that Microsoft has created. I strongly recommend that you do not mess with these. That is, unless you’re certain of what you’re doing.

To create a new rule, I clicked New Rule under Actions. A wizard appeared that walked me through the process. I selected Program on the first screen. Then, I clicked Next.

I selected “This program path” and clicked Browse. In my case, the Open window opened in System 32. That is a subfolder of Windows. I needed to move up the folder tree. To do that, I twice clicked the Up One Level button. That’s two buttons to the right of the Look In box. That took me to Local Disk (C).

I then double-clicked Program Files>>Internet Explorer>>iexplore.exe. That filled the box in the wizard. I clicked Next and selected “Allow the connection.” I clicked Next. I selected all three profiles and clicked Next. I entered the name Internet Explorer Rule and left the description box blank. I clicked Finish. Windows entered the rule at the top of the Outbound Rules list.

So, although I had opted to block all outbound connections, Internet Explorer was now an exception. Of course, that’s just one program. You’d need to do the same for any program that accesses the Internet: e-mail, antivirus updates, anti-spyware updates, etc., etc., etc.

You’ll have to figure out which programs need rules. Windows will not prompt you to grant a program Web access.

More info/source document here: http://www.komando.com/tips/index.aspx?id=2973

 

vista is for noobs. can u do this to XP pro too?

 

No,,, and a non-nooby would know that XP's firewall only blocks incoming, not outgoing...

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