Alternatively, you can set up permissions for your apps in advance. At the left side of the firewall screen shown in Figure 10-3, click “Allow a program or feature through Windows Firewall.” Proceed as shown in Figure 10-5. Figure 10-4: From time to time, your life with Windows will be interrupted by this message. It’s your firewall speaking. It’s telling you that a program is trying to get online, as though you didn’t know. Most of the time, you can just hit “Unblock” and get on with your life.
Advanced Firewall The Windows Firewall screen gives you a good deal of control over how the Windows Firewall works. But it doesn’t offer nearly the amount of tweakiness that high-end geeks demand, like control over individual ports, IP addresses, programs, and so on. It also offers no way to create a log (a text-file record) of all attempts to contact your PC from the network or the Internet, which can be handy when you suspect that some nasty hacker has been visiting you in the middle of the night. There is, however, an even more powerful firewall control panel. In an effort to avoid terrifying novices, Microsoft has hidden it, but it’s easy enough to open. It’s called the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security. Get there by typing firewall into the Start menu Search box; when you see “Windows Firewall with Advanced Security” in the list, hit Enter. Or, if you’ve already opened Windows Firewall, click “Advanced settings” in the left-side taskbar. Either way, authenticate if necessary.
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windows 7: the missing manual