Windows Vista Firewall Part 2: Advanced features

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Starting Windows Firewall with Advanced Security

There are several ways you can start this utility and one way is to select Start, Control Panel. If the standard category display is used, click System and Maintenance followed by Administrative Tools, but if Classic View is selected, just double click the Administrative Tools icon. A list of utilities is displayed and double clicking Windows Firewall with Advanced Security at the bottom opens the one we want.

If you right click the shortcut and select Properties, you will see on the Shortcut tab that the filename is wf.msc. This means that you can run Windows Firewall with Advanced Security if you hold down the Windows key and press R, then enter wf.msc and click OK. It can be started from a command prompt in the same way.

To start this utility you need to be logged onto Windows Vista using an administrator account. You will see UAC (User Account Control ) prompts when you start it too. This is because you will be making system-wide changes to the way that Windows works and UAC needs confirmation that you are authorised to make the changes and aren't a novice or some malware trying to reconfigure the system.