How to force firewall on startup - win 7

pledgeX

I've recently got a problem where my firewall doesn't turn on at startup. I can turn it on manually and it works fine, but doing that manually is a pain as I always forget. Using win7 btw.

I tried the steps on this website and made sure the services mentioned are set to start on bootup (everything was already set correctly).

I cant pinpoint what caused this, but it happened over a period of a couple of days where I installed Visual Studio and a whole bunch of related windows updates. I also got a virus over these few days, but that seemed to get cleaned up by MSE as soon as it was recognised. Full scans by MSE, Malwarebytes and Spybot all come back clean.

I'm running out of ideas here. An option I thought of was to create a batch file that I can stick in the startup folder that simply issues a command to turn on the firewall. Anyone know how to write said batch file?!

closed

any related errors in event viewer?

if you are using a router, a software firewall isn't that important

John_Gray

pledgeX wrote: »

Anyone know how to write said batch file?!

Probably! But what I do is to turn it off (in XP)...

For what you want to do, try
NETSH ADVFIREWALL SHOW ALLPROFILES STATE
to see what the current condition is, then
NETSH ADVFIREWALL SET ALLPROFILES STATE ON
You should just get "Ok."
Run the SHOW command again to check.

Then you can put the second command in a BATch file and put it in Startup - but it will probably work only if you are an Administrative user...

pledgeX

closed wrote: »

any related errors in event viewer?

if you are using a router, a software firewall isn't that important

I got two errors at the same time it booted. I'm not really sure what I'm looking for specifically but hopefully this is what you're after:

Source:        Service Control Manager
Date:          26/10/2011 20:04:39
Event ID:      7000
Level:         Error

Description:
The Hardlock service failed to start due to the following error: 
Windows cannot verify the digital signature for this file. A recent hardware or software change might have installed a file that is signed incorrectly or damaged, or that might be malicious software from an unknown source.

Log Name:      System
Source:        Service Control Manager
Date:          26/10/2011 20:04:56
Event ID:      7024
Level:         Error
Description:
The HomeGroup Listener service terminated with service-specific error

I also got an audit warning at the same time:

Log Name:      Security
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing
Date:          26/10/2011 20:04:39
Event ID:      5038
Task Category: System Integrity
Level:         Information
Keywords:      Audit Failure
Description:
Code integrity determined that the image hash of a file is not valid.  The file could be corrupt due to unauthorized modification or the invalid hash could indicate a potential disk device error.

File Name:	\Device\HarddiskVolume1\Windows\System32\drivers\hardlock.sys	

I know a software firewall isn't 100% necessary, but I want one for 2 reasons:
1 ) Extra piece of mind
2 ) My media player won't connect to my PC unless the firewall is turned on! Kind of the opposite of what I'd expect but hey ho!

pledgeX

John_Gray wrote: »

NETSH ADVFIREWALL SET ALLPROFILES STATE ON

Thanks for the reply John.

No luck though, when I run it (or the status check one) I get the message:
An error occurred while attempting to contact the Windows Firewall service. Make sure that the service is running and try your request again.

I am an administrator user. If I turn on the firewall manually then run either of the commands they work fine.

waddler_8

pledgeX wrote: »

I also got a virus over these few days, but that seemed to get cleaned up by MSE as soon as it was recognised.

What was that exactly? It should be in the History > Detected Items when you open MSE.

These might help.

http://support.microsoft.com/mats/windows_security_diagnostic/en-us

http://support.microsoft.com/mats/Malware_Prevention/en-us

John_Gray

If that NETSH command doesn't work, it may be that "the virus" has messed up your firewall settings...