group policy and windows firewall

[Guest]

someone asked me to help clean up/protect their laptop. so one of the first
things i wanted to do was make sure windows was up to date and the windows
firewall enabled. i cant do either of these. when i try to enable the
firewall - all options grayed and says protected via group policy. this is
an individual laptop that never connects to corporate network so i am not
sure why it is set up for group policies but i would like to be able to
disable this. i have looked on microsoft website and been into the group
policy editor but cant seem to figure out how to turn this off and keep it
off. Any suggestions?

 

[S.Sengupta]

'Windows Firewall options are grayed out'
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/resetfwpol.htm

regards,
S.Sengupta[MS-MVP]

 

[Pennywise]

someone asked me to help clean up/protect their laptop. so one of the first
things i wanted to do was make sure windows was up to date and the windows
firewall enabled. i cant do either of these. when i try to enable the
firewall - all options grayed and says protected via group policy. this is
an individual laptop that never connects to corporate network so i am not
sure why it is set up for group policies but i would like to be able to
disable this. i have looked on microsoft website and been into the group
policy editor but cant seem to figure out how to turn this off and keep it
off. Any suggestions?

Try
Start | Run <type in> services.msc <enter>

See if the windows FIrewall service is enabled.

if so it's enabled; but a poor choice in firewalls, might look for a
replacement.