A Firewall is a Software/Hardware which checks every information coming from the internet or a network and depending upon the
Firewall settings, it either
blocks or allow the information to pass through to your computer.
It prevents the
hackers and malicious software from getting
access to your computer from the internet or a network. You can let the
intended data to get in and out by setting some exceptions. Some
exceptions are set up automatically by Windows 7, others have to be
configured manually. let's see how.
1. Click the
Start button to view the
Start Menu and then choose the
Control Panel option.
2. The
Control Panel window opens up.
Now click the
System and Security link from this window.
3. The
System and Security section of
Control Panel opens up and you can see the direct link for the
Windows Firewall.
4. Click on the
Windows Firewall and a new window opens up.
On the
left pane, you can see various links like,
Change notification settings, Turn Windows Firewall on or off, Restore defaults and Advanced settings etc.
On the
right pane, there are two types of networks link for which you can set firewall settings. They are
Home or Work (Private) networks and
Public networks.
By default the
Firewall state is
ON for both the networks.
5. Click on the
Change Notification settings link in the
Left Pane and the window will look like below.
To
turn off the
Windows Firewall click on the
Turn off Windows Firewall
option button.
Click on
OK button.
6. As you can notice a new button
Use recommended settings is shown. To enable the
default or recommended settings either click on the
Use recommended settings button on the
right pane or click on the
Restore default link on the
left pane.
Click on the
Restore default button and a
confirmation popup opens up, Click on
Yes.
7. On the
left pane, Click on the
Advance Settings link to view or change settings. The
Advanced settings for the
Local Computer displays as below.
8. Click on the
Inbound Rules link in the
left pane. A list of all Inbound Rules is displayed. On clicking an
enabled rule, a list of actions are shown in the
Actions Pane. Click on
Disable Rule to disable the selected rule. You can also
Cut, Copy and Delete the rule.
Note: Same procedure is for
Enabling/Disabling the
Outbound Rules.
9. Click on the
Monitoring in the
left pane to monitor the settings like
Active Networks, Firewall State, General Settings and Logging settings etc.
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