For your security some settings are controlled by group policy

[Nodsirrah]

I am running XP SP3 Home on 2 computers on a wireless network router.
When I go to Control Panel and select Windows Firewall I have a banner
across the top "For your security some settings are controlled by group
policy".
I used Regedit to delete "EnableFirewall", after I reboot I still get the
same banner. I can turn the Firewall on and off in One Care.
I removed and reinstalled One Care 3 times, still no change, so I called
support, after 2 days and 5 hours of sharing my computer with them they could
not remove the banner.
One Care support told me to contact the XP support.
I am worn out.

 

[Jose]

I am running XP SP3 Home on 2 computers on a wireless network router.
When I  go to Control Panel and select Windows Firewall  I have a banner
across the top "For your security some settings are controlled by group
policy".
I used Regedit to delete "EnableFirewall", after I reboot I still get the
same banner. I can turn the Firewall on and off in One Care.
I removed and reinstalled One Care 3 times, still no change, so I called
support, after 2 days and 5 hours of sharing my computer with them they could
not remove the banner.
One Care support told me to contact the XP support.
I am worn out.

The message just means that there are other Windows Firewall settings
in the Group Policy settings.

"...some settings.." is the operative phrase in the message. Maybe it
should say "...some other settings if you are interested or think you
might need them..."

The GP default settings are generally fine for home use, but there are
many articles to read.

Instead of just mentioning that with nowhere to read (don't you hate
that) here is a good starting point:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490626.aspx

 

[Nodsirrah]

The message just means that there are other Windows Firewall settings
in the Group Policy settings.

"...some settings.." is the operative phrase in the message. Maybe it
should say "...some other settings if you are interested or think you
might need them..."

The GP default settings are generally fine for home use, but there are
many articles to read.

Instead of just mentioning that with nowhere to read (don't you hate
that) here is a good starting point:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490626.aspx
Thanks Jose,

The problem is I get no response when I run "mmc".
Rebooting just restarts the computer, I have no choice of logging in as
Administrator or anything. I am the Administrator.

 

[Jose]

The problem is I get no response when I run "mmc".
Rebooting just restarts the computer, I have no choice of logging in as
Administrator or anything. I am the Administrator.

I have XP Pro, looked around and could not find a way to leave the
firewall enabled and a the same time get rid of just that string of
text at the top of the settings screen.

If you do some Google searching, you can find people with XP Home,
that talk about it, but I never found a post that says I got rid of
the message and my firewall still works. They mention some registry
deletes that don't exist on my system and their methods don't make a
lot of sense - I think they are not sure what they are doing, they are
just trying stuff.

I do not have a machine I can just start trying things and I don't
want to disable my firewall or break it experimenting to get rid of a
message that understand completely, but don't care about. It is an
informative message and not an error, or I would fix it.

I am not sure what "no response" means when you run mmc, and gpedit is
not in Home (I forgot you were running Home), but you can download a
third party policy editor so you don't have to tinker with the
registry to get the same effect. Doug Knox has one here:

http://www.dougknox.com/

I don't want to download/install it because I have no use for it and
it doesn't look like it will make the informative message disappear.
I looked in my gpedit and all the firewall settings are not configured
by default, but the informative message still shows up.

Maybe some other folks have better ideas.