Disabling internal firewall enables F&P sharing

[Pulse]

Hi.

If possible, I'd like some help understanding why Seven behaves in the following way.

Scenario:
Seven Ultimate x64
Third party firewall installed. (Same behaviour with various products)
Network type = Public.
Client for MS networks = Disabled (Adapter)
File and printer sharing for MS networks = Disabled (Adapter)
Netbios over TCPIP = Disabled (Adapter)
Disable internal Seven firewall (Public and Private)

Disabling the internal firewall causes file and printer sharing as well as network discovery to be enabled in the Advanced sharing property page. Disabling these settings re-enables the internal firewall.

This behaviour seems counter intuitive to me but perhaps I'm missing something? Also, according to the Seven Resource Kit:

Network Discovery can be enabled or disabled separately for different network location types. For example, Network Discovery is enabled by default on networks with the private location type, but it is disabled on networks with the public or domain location types

I have tried several different methods to disable these services, as well as the firewall, including the standard check boxes in the interface, various netsh commands and group policy, the result remains the same.

I'm not overly concerned about someone being able to gain access to resources on my PC via this Public network, as it's completely locked down, both in the Seven interface and in the third party firewall, where communication id completely blocked for NetBIOS, SMB, Discovery and WSD. I just don't like having these options enabled.

The bottom line, how can sharing and discovery be disabled together with the firewall?

Thanks

 

[not so gray matter]

If you really want to kill Windows Firewall, just go into the services.msc menu and kill the service there.

I have no idea why it does that, but I experience a similar issue. No matter what I do, my settings for file sharing never stick.

 

[Pulse]

Thanks for the reply.

I did wonder about disabling the service, in fact I always have had these services disabled under XP, but I wasn't completely sure about the consequences under Seven.

According to Blackviper:

Issues Encountered

Certain applications could also fail during the install process. The reason could be that many applications like to "open up ports" on the Windows Firewall for communication to the internet (activation, phone home, updates, etc) and they do that at installation. If the Windows Firewall is disabled, those exceptions cannot be done and the installer fails. These situations should be reported to the particular software developers as a problem with "assuming" every computer is configured the same.

As far as I'm aware, having checked the internal firewalls rule sets, the only application I use that creates an exception is uTorrent, (I don't install this, just use a settings.ini) but it doesn't fail to work if the firewall is disabled, that option may also be disabled.


I'll disable the service for now and keep an eye on things. It still seems a bit extreme to me and I have to wonder if this is actually a bug (it could just be the user )

Edit: Even with the firewall service disabled the settings for file and printer sharing and network discovery don't stay disabled.