Disable Windows Firewall and IE ESC

I just wanted to make a post for disabling the Windows firewall from the command line on new server builds because I always manage to forget and this is pretty much the quickest, easiest way.  From the command prompt just type:

netsh advfirewall set allprofiles state off

and voila, no more wasted time trying to figure out weird network issues, super simple.

To disable each firewall individually adjust your command as follows:

netsh advfirewall set domainprofile state off
netsh advfirewall set privateprofile state off
netsh advfirewall set publicprofile state off

I also like to disable IE ESC from blocking websites by default because it is such a pain if I need to troubleshoot.  Unfortunately there isn’t a very graceful way to disable this function from the command line so I usually will just go through the Server Manager GUI to take care of this.  Server Manager -> Server Summary -> Security Information -> Configure IE ESC

On new server builds I manage to overlook these so taking the time to go through and disable these 2 items is a great time saver.

Josh Reichardt

Josh is the creator of this blog, a system administrator and a contributor to other technology communities such as /r/sysadmin and Ops School. You can also find him on Twitter and Facebook.