Windows Firewall Control: Windows Firewall Control

Windows Firewall Control is a nifty little application which extends the functionality of the Windows Firewall and provides quick access to the most frequent options of the Windows Firewall. It runs in the system tray and allows user to control the native firewall easily without having to waste time by navigating to the specific part of the firewall.

Windows Firewall Notifier: WoKhan

Description

Windows Firewall Notifier (WFN) extends the default Windows embedded firewall behavior, allowing to handle outgoing connections, and displaying (almost) real-time information about the current connections. Little disclaimer (because I have to)

This application is provided "as is". Use at your own risk.
Since I do not want you to panic: the only thing that could happen is that you lose your Internet connection (for instance if "something" prevents Windows Firewall Notifier to be launched properly while all outgoing connection have been blocked as required). In that case, you will be able to restore the previous settings by launching the Windows Firewall Notifier again (it will then "uninstall"). You can also go to the control panel / administration tools / advanced firewall settings to enable back all outgoing connections.
As said: nothing that could really hurt ^_^ Behavior

This application only uses existing Windows features, enabling some of them when first launched:

• Enables the Windows embedded firewall
• Sets the firewall to block both inbound and outbound connections for which no rule exists
• Enables the default Windows firewall inbound connection notification
• Enables the Windows firewall outbound connections logging (disabled by default)
• Creates a scheduled task linked to the Windows firewall event log entries, allowing Windows Firewall Notifier to be launched when needed only

Installation



The application can be unzipped in the folder of your choice (usually c:\Programs\WindowsFirewallNotifier), knowing that it must not be moved once activated (unless you actually want to remove it).

When launching version 1.6 for the first time, I advise to remove any svchost.exe firewall rule you may have created using the previous versions since the services management logic has been way improved.
How-to

Once enabled (after a first launch), the application will show a notification balloon when an application attempts an outgoing connexion while not being allowed to do so. A click on the notification will display a dialog box, allowing the user to:

• temporarily allow the application
• create a rule for the application, so that it will always be able to connect
• block the application once only, after what other notifications may (will) appear
• always block the application (no notification will therefore be displayed afterwards)

Update 1.1.0 : By relaunching the application, a new dialog will appear, allowing to display and modify the exceptions list ("always blocked" applications), to check the connections lastly blocked by Windows (allowing to create rules directly from that point), and, as before, to deactivate WFN.

Update 1.2.0 : The same window will allow you to check all Windows firewall rules (and to remove the unneeded ones).

Update 1.5.0 : The application now allows to monitor active connections.

NB: If you get a services list starting with "*" when using service detection, it means that WFN was not able to properly detect the service the connection originates from, probably because the corresponding process is not running anymore.