Use Group Policy to turn off Windows Firewall?

[captaincrunch00]

Hi there, I've been searching around in GPO to find a way to turn off the Windows firewall by default. There must be a way to do it, I just cant find it.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks

 

[drew1701d]

On your workstation config policy goto

Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\System Services\
and disable "Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing

 

[porkchopexpress]

drew1701d is correct but why do you need to turn it off out of curiosity?

 

[captaincrunch00]

I didnt see the "Windows Firewall" service, but I did find it under:

Computer Config-> Admin Templates-> Network-> Network Connections-> Prohibit Windows Firewall

I am turning it off because it is nothing but annoying inside of my network. I dont need a firewall on every computer, it is pointless. We've got enough firewalls blocking stuff from getting in.
A reissued windows update turned the firewall on for every XP computer I have, now I've been getting about 75 phone calls in 2 hours about it, and people cant get to webpages that are internal, some programs load up and check for updates and that screen comes up asking to block the file... It's really nothing but annoying.

 

[porkchopexpress]

Ok fair enough. It all depends on the size of your setup and weather or not you have many visitors or laptop users, your perimeter firewall is little use when a worm is loose on your LAN/WAN. Just a small amount of time adding the necessary port exclusions could potentially save you a massive headache in the future, turn it off for now but i would recommend ‘managing’ the Windows firewall in the future.

Just my opinion.

 

[MTVW]

you can turn it off via group policy....and it works fine. To verify just type gpupdate from a command prompt...then type gpresult and see if the policy is applied. Best bet is to create a new GPO named Windows Firewall and link it up. This way when you do GPResult you will see the specific GPO listed. Computer Config-> Admin Templates-> Network-> Network Connections->Windows Firewall->Domain Profile->Windows Firewall Protect all connections set it to disabled.