Windows Firewall Help needed.

[THRiLL KiLL]

Sorry if i posted this in the wrong section.

Google failed me today. Either that or i need copious amounts of caffeine and the will make sense to me.

I work for a backup software company. We have ran into an issue where we can not push out our software to new machines that have the windows firewall enabled. (windows 7, 8, 2008r2, 2012)

We are pushing the install out over a domain environment. (this fails also in workgroup environments)

before you ask, we have added exceptions into the firewall for port 1910 (the port we communicate on) both incoming and out going and to the 3 different profiles, private, domain and public.


we have added exceptions for the .exe files that would be started on the remote system. same issue.

if we install locally on the remote system, (effectively having something actively listening on port 1910) then the install goes fine when the exclusions are present.


we have added exceptions for ports 135, 137, 138, 139, 445 ... all still block our install.


then we started playing with the profiles

On Remote Server Windows Firewall enabled on Public
it Installs

On Remote Server Windows Firewall enabled on Domain and Public
it Installs

On Remote Server Windows Firewall enabled on Private, and Public
install Error 10060

On Remote Server Windows Firewall enabled on Domain,Private, and Public
install Error 10060


so it looks like the issue has to do with added security on the private firewall profile. What exactly it is.. i am at a loss.

yes i know the simple solution would be to either do a local install or disable the private profile temporally, but when you need to install on 300 to 500 machines at a time..

Please let me know if you have any ideas... or condolences

 

[THRiLL KiLL]

well here is what i found out. when the private profile for the firewall is enabled, it does not repspond to port requests. When it is disabled, then the port request will come back instantly telling you if it went through or failed

 

[THRiLL KiLL]

for thoes of you who ever run into this again. private enables stealth mode on the firewall.. here is how to disable

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff720058.aspx

 

[mikeymikec]

Eh? I thought the whole point of the Windows Firewall's public/not-public modes is that in public mode (ie. an untrusted LAN environment such as an airport), the firewall is meant to be on a higher security configuration than in a private environment (work/home network) where one might want devices/services to be more discoverable.

I'm not disputing what you're saying btw, I'm just a bit confused.