Thursday, February 16, 2006

Controlling the Windows Firewall from the Command Line

Are you a command line guru? Did you know you can configure the Windows firewall from the MS-DOS console without using the GUI interface. This tip requires that Windows XP SP2 be installed on your computer.

To control the firewall, you need to use the NETSH command. For example, from the MS-DOS console (from the Run... command type "cmd" and press the Enter key) type "netsh firewall /?" and press the Enter key. This will displays online help.

Some of things that you can do from the command line are: view, change and delete firewall configurations. For example, to show the state of your firewall, at the MS-DOS console type: "netsh firewall show state" and press the Enter key. You can use the online help for figuring out the rest of the commands.

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