firewall cannot be turned on? pl help

[wangma]

iam using win xp pro with sp2
the enable firewall option in the security centre is not able to turn
on the firewall and instead directs to trty to turn on the firewall
through the firewall dialog box in the control panel-- when i go to
that firewall dialog box the firewall is shown as turned off and the
"on" option there is not selectable.
what should i do to turn on the firewall.
(iam not using another firewall, and i had upgraded from win xp pro
with sp1 having zone alarm firewall which was uninstalled by mew after
upgrading)

 

[Ramesh, MS-MVP]

When you open (or 'run') firewall.cpl, does it read as "For your security,
some settings are controlled by Group Policy" at the top of the applet? If
that's the case, try this:

For Windows XP Home Edition:
---------------------------------

Open Regedit.exe and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsFirewall\DomainProfil­e
(and)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsFirewall\StandardProf­ile

In the right-pane, delete the "EnableFirewall" value.

Close Regedit.exe and restart Windows.

For Windows XP Professional:
-------------------------------

From Start/Run, type Gpedit.msc and navigate to:

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

Set the following options to "Not Configured" (defaults)

Windows Firewall: Protect all network connections
Windows Firewall: Do not allow exceptions
Windows Firewall: Define program exceptions
Windows Firewall: Allow local program exceptions
Windows Firewall: Allow remote administration exception
Windows Firewall: Allow file and printer sharing exception
Windows Firewall: Allow ICMP exceptions
Windows Firewall: Allow Remote Desktop exception
Windows Firewall: Allow UPnP framework exception
Windows Firewall: Prohibit notifications
Windows Firewall: Allow logging
Windows Firewall: Prohibit unicast response to multicast or broadcast
requests
Windows Firewall: Define port exceptions
Windows Firewall: Allow local port exceptions

--
Ramesh, Microsoft MVP
Windows XP Shell/User

Windows XP Troubleshooting
http://www.winhelponline.com

 

[de Graff]

If you are like me (I have a laptop which I use at work AND at home), your
firewall settings may be set by a policy pushed out by the netadmin people.
Ours was set to disable the firewall (to allow corporate admin to SMS into
the computers). Unfortunately this meant I couldn't turn the firewall on
when away from the office so another policy was pushed out that allowed the
firewall to be enabled when not hooked into the corporate LAN.