Letting a Program Poke through Windows Vista's Firewall
Although
firewalls offer protection, they can be as annoying as an airport
security scan. In their zest for security, firewalls sometimes go
overboard, stopping programs from working the way they should.
You might try to run a new program, for example, only to be greeted with the window in Figure 2 . If you spot that window and you haven't
tried to run a program, click the Keep Blocking button: You've
effectively stopped what could be a rogue program from connecting with
the Internet.
But if you want the
program to run, click the Unblock button instead. The firewall adds that
program to its Exceptions list and no longer bugs you about it.
On a few conditions, however, you'll need to delve deeper into the firewall's settings:
Manually add a program to the Exceptions list.
Change how the firewall blocks a particular program.
Unblock a program you've blocked by mistake.
To do any of those three things, follow these steps:
Choose Control Panel from the Start menu.
The Control Panel appears, listing its categories.
In the Security category, choose Allow a Program Through Windows Firewall.
The Windows Firewall Settings window opens to its Exceptions tab, as shown in Figure 3
. Here, Windows Firewall lists the programs it recognizes. Programs
with a checked box are able to accept incoming connections through the
firewall. No check mark in a program's box? Then that program is
blocked.
From this window, you can take any of the following actions:
Add a program to the Exceptions list.
Don't see your program on the Exceptions list? Click the Add Program
button, and the Add a Program window lists all your known programs.
Click the program's name and click OK to put it on the Exceptions list.
Unblock a program. Unblock any mistakenly blocked program by putting a check mark in its adjacent box and clicking Apply.
Block a program. Block any suspicious program from accepting Internet connections by removing the check mark from its box and clicking Apply.
Delete a program's name. If you've uninstalled a program but it still appears on the list, click its name and click Delete to remove its entry.
Click OK to save your changes.
The firewall saves your work and closes the window.
These tips help you wring the most work out of your firewall:
Want more
information about a program listed in the firewall? Click that program's
name and click the Properties button. (Refer to Figure 18-1 .) A window appears, explaining the program's purpose.
Think you've messed up your firewall settings? Click the Advanced tab
and click Restore Defaults. That removes any changes you've made to the
firewall, leaving it set up the way it was when first installed.
(Clicking Restore Defaults might also keep some programs from working
until you add them to the Exceptions list again.)
Don't want the firewall to monitor one of your network connections —
your FireWire or Bluetooth connection, for example? Click the Advanced
tab and remove the check mark from that particular connection's name.
Like antivirus
programs, firewalls usually butt heads: You don't want to install two
firewalls on the same PC. The exception comes with hardware firewalls.
Most routers come with a built‐in hardware firewall that manages the
traffic flow between the Internet and your network or PC. Hardware
firewalls don't conflict with software firewalls, like the ones built
into Vista and Windows XP. Feel free to run them both, and they'll both
get along fine.
In fact, the
software firewall does something extra that the hardware firewall can't:
It manages traffic between the PCs on your network. If an evil program
infects a PC on your network, the software firewall can help stop that
PC from infecting the other PCs on your network.
