Disable Windows XP Firewall remotely

[ahmedramzi]

I want to install an application on about 200 client PC's on the network in a workstation environment. the problem is that it needs administrator's credintials, also i cannot get pass from windows xp firewall.

any ideas?

[wwz.megamoose.com]

I really doubt you can disable the firewall remotly as this would be a MAJOR security\hack risk. You are probabally just going to have to put it on each computer one by one.

[D.Celt]

Are you not in a domain with that many pc's? I'd be interested to hear how you're going to deploy this application without it. In a workgroup you'd have to install it to each pc individually anyway.

[FrankE9999]

It depends on how you have security setup. If you have the admin shares enabled you should be able to map a network drive using the following command.

net use z: \\computer\c$ /user:computer\administrator password

You can then upgrade the netfw.inf (c$\WinNT\inf\netfw.inf) file with the desired firewall configuration. Once this is done you need to run a single command on the remote system "netsh firewall reset". This can be done several different ways.

Copy a batch file containing this line of code to the remote system and schedule it to run using soon (w2k resource kit) or schtasks (Windows XP). Another option is to use PsExec from SysInternals to run the command on the remote system.

Finally use "net use z: /delete" to delete the drive mapping.

Reference: Using the Windows Firewall INF File in Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2

There is a major drawback to this method in that any manual changes you have made to the firewall that aren't included in the netfw.inf file are lost. The better solution would be to dynamically generate the netfw.inf file based on the current firewall settings and applications installed on your system but this is a lot more complex.

[Chris242]

I really doubt you can disable the firewall remotly as this would be a MAJOR security\hack risk. You are probabally just going to have to put it on each computer one by one.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sure you can disable it remotely. I wrote a script to do it for you using auto it: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=52865 Have fun!!!