Windows – Disabling Windows Server 2008 firewall

firewallwindows

I applied a Windows firewall rule that blocks all tcp connection and thus kicked myself out of remote desktop on a dedicated server. I managed to get into recovery via VNC, which is basically a windows xp recovery system.

I have access to the physical files of the Windows Server 2008 R2 installation, but I don't know how to disable the firewall so I can reboot from recovery and connect to the W2K8 via remote desktop.

How can I edit the firewall properties of Windows Server 2008 while the OS is essentially powered off and I have filesystem access to the system files?

Best Answer

You can disable Windows Firewall using the Registry; the relevant settings are in

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\SharedAccess\Parameters\FirewallPolicy

Under there, you will find three keys: DomainProfile, PublicProfile and StandardProfile; each of them contains a value called EnableFirewall, which controls the firewall state for that profile. If you set all three values to 0, Windows Firewall will be completely disabled.

If you want to do this for an offline system, you'll need to load that system's Registry into Regedit; the file to load is C:\Windows\System32\config\SYSTEM. You'll also need to find the right ControlSet to configure, because CurrentControlSet is only available at runtime; when operating on an offline Registry, you'll need to choose the correct one between the various ControlSet00x you'll find under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Select can help you here.