Group Policy enforcing firewall

[Guest]

A couple of days ago, my bittorrent client stopped working. It turned out
that the built in XP firewall ( I have sp2 on home ) had been activated.
So I opened the firewall tool in the control panel and the options were non
clickable, i could not click the turn it off.
At the top it says "For safety reasons some settings are controlled by a
group policy".
I thought it was a virus so I ran NOD32, deep scan with full heurestics on,
nothing was found.

I've been looking on microsoft support but i cant find anything, the only
thing that i think would help is the group policy editor console. It only
works on xp professional and I have home.

What could have caused this? How would I be able to disable the policies /
disable the firewall?
Thanks in advance

 

[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

 

[Guest]

Thank you! That did it. I can now turn the firewall off in firewall.cpl, the
options arent greyed out anymore. However the group policy notification is
still there.

 

[Ramesh, MS-MVP]

No idea what causes that notification. BTW, running without an internet
firewall is very risky.

--
Ramesh, Microsoft MVP
Windows XP Shell/User

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

 

[Guest]

Oh I use a hardware firewall, having a software one is just alot of trouble.
Thanks again

 

[Ramesh, MS-MVP]

Can you export these two keys:

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

--
Ramesh, Microsoft MVP
Windows XP Shell/User

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

 

[Guest]

They both have nothing but (Standard) in them, type REG_SZ and no data

 

[Guest]

Ugh, somehow the built in windows firewall is still blocking the ports I need
to have open, I tried enabling the firewall and opening the ports but no go.
It still didnt work.
How do I get rid of these awful group policies? Im in a small home network,
3 computers.

 

[Ramesh, MS-MVP]

Zeb,

You have me on that point. I don't know what other settings are causing
this, but will look into this.

--
Ramesh, Microsoft MVP
Windows XP Shell/User

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

 

[S. Taylor]

Until you figure out the issues mentioned in your later posts,
have you tried setting the app and it's need ports as exclusions?