windows vista firewall question

hey wilders, ok so i have a vista 64bit comp and im wondering if outbound control is necessary?(im just using default vista firewall. i looked at the guide for vista's firewall, and i blocked all inbound and outboundconnections for the domain, and private profile since i dont use those

and for the public profile which i use, i set it to block all incoming connections except for the ones i allowed (i.e. multiplayer games) and for outbound i tried blocking all outbound connections but i would have to make a rule for every single program that i use that uses the internet( Avira update, threatfire update,asquared free, SAS free, mbam dree, firefox, IE8, Windows Update, my games, etc.)

i tried blocking all outbound for public profile(the one i use) and i was still connected to the internet, but i couldnt do anything internet related(i.e. browse, or update my Av etc)

so should i just set up rules with the outbound connection for added security or should i just leave the outbound connection for public profile to allow all since i have a router that im behind.

 

You don't need to block anything in the profiles that are inactive.

It's up to you. If you trust the programs and don't care about controlling their network behaviour, then you could allow outbound. Alternatively, you could manually create rule(s) that allow specific programs to specific TCP remote ports such as for example: 80, 554, 1935 & 1755. Also maybe think about restricting the DNS client service to UDP port 53 and the dns server ip addresses. There are also ICMP and DHCP rules you might want to create. It is a lot of work to do, but once you have it set up, export the firewall policy for safe-keeping in case you need it again.

Or to make things easier to accomplish this, you might want to try Sphinx Win 7 Firewall control. It works on Vista as well. Just make sure you d/load the 64 bit version.

The trouble with Vista's firewall is the logs don't include the programs that are accessing or being blocked to/from Internet, making it quite an arduous and time consuming process at times figuring out the less common program executables that need it. This is why the Sphinx firewall control can be a huge help in this process, because it will show the executable attempting access.