How to turn off Windows firewall

Windows Firewall has improved a lot since Windows XP and keeping it turned on isn’t much of an annoyance anymore. However, occasionally you’ll need to turn it off. Here’s how to do so.

Open the Start Menu, and then click on Control Panel. You’ll then need to click on “Windows Firewall”.

On the left-hand side of the window, you’ll see an option that says, “Turn Windows Firewall On or Off”. After pressing that, you’ll see a number of options to turn off domain network location settings, home or work network location settings and public network location settings.

There you can turn all of them, or only some of them, off and back on again. You may need to do this when downloading certain programs or running certain applications, as the firewall can block services that you need to run.