How to disable the Windows firewall from the commandline
There are many Network Administration tasks that can't be accomplished when the Windows Firewall is enabled. Since the release of XP SP2 the Firewall is enabled by default. Here is a way to disable the firewall from the commandline which can be very usefull.
Contents
Prerequisites
You must have access to the PC you want to disable the Firewall on.
Possible options: Local access, a remote shell like telnet, or you must have admin access to the computer and be on another computer within the same subnet (this requires PSEXEC).
XP
Checking the Firewall Status
The 'NetSH' command allows us to check the firewall status.
netsh firewall show opmode
Disabling the Firewall
netsh firewall set opmode DISABLE
Enabling the Firewall
netsh firewall set opmode ENABLE
Windows 7
Checking Firewall Status
netsh advfirewall show profiles state
Where profiles is AllProfiles, CurrentProfile, DomainProfile, PrivateProfile, or PublicProfile.
Disabling the Firewall
netsh advfirewall set profiles state off
Enabling the Firewall
netsh advfirewall set profiles state on
Notes
1) You can also disable the Windows Firewall via Group Policy if your computers are on a Windows 2000+ domain.