Windows Firewall Control (WFC) by BiniSoft.org

Well, give it a try and let us know if they work. If not, you can uninstall any of these two and keep the most useful.

 

fair enough. and done. they seems to be running fine post-initial install of glasswire (no immediate visible conflicts), but I'll let them run together for a few days before judging...

fwiw, I'm on 64-bit Windows 8.1 on a new laptop, which should at some point update itself to Windows 10. i'm only using Windows Defender for anti-virus. Want to keep my setup simple at least until Windows has safely updated itself.

 

WFC doesn't provide all the pretty graphics - which, I admit, are quite nice - but all that is absolutely not necessary.

WFC operates as a classic firewall control interface.

I personally wouldn't combine the two, but it won't hurt anything on your system if that combo works both for you personally and on your specific system.

 

I have windows 10 in a VM and tried to install WFC, but when I click ok to install, the screen flashes and no other dialog box appears. Tried restarting, but still a no go. The WFC process appears in the task manager briefly, until the flash, then it just dies. Tested tinywall to see if it was just a firewall program thing, but it install no problem. I haven't super tweaked this too much, just removed all apps and some of the telemetry workarounds, so I don't think I disabled anything that would require this particular program to install. (I have installed 7 other programs already so it is just WFC I'm having trouble with) Anyone else having trouble?

 

I turned off Secure Rules, but I still cannot enable sharing. It turns back off immediately and no new rules are created. On top of that, I then disabled all my blocking rules and set low filtering profile, it still didnt help. The only thing that helps is No Filtering profile.

 

Windows Firewall Control uses Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) technology which takes advantage of 3D acceleration. TinyWall works because it uses Windows Forms technology which does not provide rich graphics. If you use VirtualBox, uncheck Enable 3D acceleration from the Display preferences. The included driver does not work with the 3D acceleration required by WPF. I had the same problem in VirtualBox and this solved the problem. If you check the Application log in Event Log you will see that .NET crashes because of the graphics driver.

Check in your rules list the rules with the groups named "File and Printer Sharing" and "Network Discovery". Enable manually all these rules which apply to your location (usually Private for a home network) and you should be able to browse your network with Medium Filtering profile enabled.

 

I have a rundll periodically attempting a connection. I haven't found a way to see its command line parameters, so I don't know what it really is, other than maybe by running process monitor, but it connects so rarely that I'd rather not run it 24/7. Any ideas on how I could better decide whether to block it or not, and can I block specific rundll or do I need to block rundll completely?

 

Thanks, that did the trick

 

3rd party anti-executable apps could reveal what program is calling rundll32 or what rundll32 is calling. That way, you can see if the application and its command line parameters are trustworthy. Some of these apps also allow for executables to be added to a vulnerable list, which means it'll pop up a warning whenever rundll32 tried to execute something.

I have had rundll32.exe, both 64 and 32 version set to block in WFC rules for a long time. Nothing sinister to report as feedback yet...

 

I echo that and also report no issues so far in blocking rundll32.exe

 

I also have rundll32 popping up now and then. I normally allow it temporarily - I don't want to block it permanently in case it's needed by Windows system, especially now that my new laptop may update from Windows 8.1 to 10 any day... Also, this is a new laptop so it's unlikely to be infected by anything already, and it seems it normal for rundll32 to use the internet now and then, although I would love to know what's calling it. I understand that blocking it doesn't crash the system, or anything, but sometimes things like that can cause problems down the road...

as for Glasswire, it seems to be working fine with WFC - at least no explicit conflicts that I can see. I just use it as a monitoring/information tool, while WFC does the heavy lifting (allowing, blocking, notifications, mode, ...) Glasswire's CPU use is low (close to 0% most of the time), but memory use is very high (higher than any other process while I'm just surfing the web here), about 500 MB which is twice what Firefox is using now (the second highest memory user) - I do have a VPN on and a bunch of torrents going in the background so I guess Glasswire could be using memory to log all those hundreds (it says "+999 more") of incoming and outgoing connections. I don't care about the memory though because I have 8 GB of ram on this new laptop and I'm about to upgrade to 16 GB, and I want programs to use it to run smoothly. So I think Glasswire might be worth running with WFC to get extra information if you don't fret memory use, but YMMV. i'll keep using it with WFC.

 

Windows Firewall Control v.4.5.3.0 - New version

What's new:
- New: If the profile is set to No Filtering and the user inserts a new USB drive, the profile is automatically reverted to the previous profile to avoid unwanted programs to automatically connect to the network/Internet.
- Improved: Added Windows Firewall service into the dependencies list of Windows Firewall Control service to ensure that the services are started in the correct order. This requires a clean install.
- Improved: The minimum width for the columns from Manage Rules and Connections Log was reduced so that more columns can fit in one screen.
- Fixed: Rules defined for programs located on removable drives don't work after removing and reconnecting the drive because the assigned id for the drive changes, even if the drive letter remains the same. Now, the firewall state is refreshed automatically by WFC so that the rules will work automatically.
- Fixed: Merging rules with port ranges fails to open the merge rule dialog. Nothing happens and the user does not know what the problem is.
- Fixed: The updater hangs if the Windows Firewall Control service is stopped while initiating the update procedure.

There are no updates to the translation files.

Download location: http://binisoft.org/download/wfc4setup.exe
SHA1: 2da47748215593e9cfb0ca4b9ab745f527c2298a

Have a great weekend,
Alexandru

 

First prize for independent developer of the year goes to ...
Cheers!

 

Hi Alexandru

When trying to upgrade from the automatic update check prompt I see the following and am unable to complete the upgrade.



I have also tried to download the new installer from the website and then run that but I get the same.

Any ideas as to what the trouble could be?

Regards, Baldrick

 

Try to disable VoodooShield. It prevents the installer to do what it should do. Also, the same applies to all other security products which may prevent WFC from installing correctly. The error that you receive means that the second installer (wfc4setup.exe for which you see the UAC prompt) which is extracted by the first installer (also wfc4setup.exe, the one that you download) into the temporary folder is blocked by a 3rd party security software.

Does it work if you uninstall WFC and make a clean installation ? Do a search in this topic to see how you can manually uninstall WFC.

 

Hi Alexandru

No, that does not help, even with VoodooShield completely removed I still get the same result unfortunately. And for good measure I even shutdown WSA as well...and still not working. I do not think that it is that at all.

As it happens I have been updating WFC for over 18 months with both WSA & VoodooShield installed and active and this is the first time that the issue has ever occurred so I believe that it is something different in with the installer.

Regards, Baldrick

 

Hi,

Are you running Windows 10?

I have this error after migrating to Windows 10 (from Windows 7).

My workaround is right click on the installer & select "Run as administrator".

No problem updating using this method.

You may wish to try it.

 

Hi Alexandru,

To benefit from this, will need to uninstall & re-install?

Thanks.

 

Same question...

TIA

 

Yes, you will have to uninstall (keep your settings) and reinstall it again. The benefit would be for the users that sometimes receive at Windows start-up the WFC system tray icon with exclamation mark, stating that it can't connect to the service. If you don't have this behavior, then nothing will change for you.

 

Hi smith2006

Many thanks for your response. I finally sorted the issue by doing an uninstall & reinstall as suggested by Alexandrud...but I will bear in mind what you have posted, for future reference, as I am indeed running WInodws 10.

Regards, Baldrick

 

http://puu.sh/jLCbW/7499fb5afe.png
I am having the same issue too.
Windows 10. Tried in-app updating with WSA and VS disabled. No gain.
Downloaded latest installer from site and ran elevated and it installed successfully.

 

This is how I have averted this problem for the last several updates. Much easier than Uninstall and reinstall.

 

@alexandrud

Thank you very much for new version!

How is your stand about ...

I can unfortunately not test the "reset rules" thing right now" ... nevertheless it would be interesting to know any news about ...

I wish you a good week.

Alpengreis

 

In the next version. It wasn't a priority feature and it was postponed. I did not forget about it.

Regarding the updating problem on Windows 10 (installer executed without administrative privileges), I will investigate this.