Windows Firewall Control (WFC) by BiniSoft.org

You should see something like this:



I just tried with WFC 6.8.1.0 and 6.8.2.0 on Windows 10 and Windows 11. It works as expected. Make sure you did not suppress the notifications for WFC from:

 

Thanks Alexandru.
Notification center...Your tool is not present. But I think you are on the right way.

edit: done! (I do not remember exactly how, but it was 'something to change somewhere' in the notification center>after that your prog did not appear in the list. But after having tried again to block a .exe (by WFC) , then suddenly WFC arrived in the list !!)
thks Paul Brussels Belgium

 

@myk1

Thanks for letting us know that it worked again with this methode, could be useful for other people too

 

You are welcome but now it is a 'nightmare'. Each program (or 'nearly' each program) sends notifications. This was not the case in my previous version of W10 (the 1803). Immediately after displaying the notification, the program arrives in the list! And I have to tick 'I refuse' !! I have already had this three times today...Windows is less and less funny.
edit 2nd of june: it is quiet now! three apps had something to say (lol), and now it's finished!

 

How to deal with Visual Studio in this case? It creates a lot of new directory with random names in temp folders for background updates, new one after each failed background updates gets denied.

 

For this particular case, I would use Low Filtering profile for a few minutes once or twice a month when I manually update Visual Studio. We can't have them all.

 

Outpost Firewall has this option, but it does not use WFP.

 

You can implement this option with WFP too, but you've to use kernel-mode callout driver.

 

is it possible to set the rule panels to sort by name as default?

 

No, the current sorting status is not saved anywhere and can't be restored on reopening. There is no plan to add this as a feature.

 

There was some advice on the forum, and I wrote it down. It really works.
1\ Sort the rules by name.
2\ After sorting the rules, select all the rules and use the context menu to export a partial set of rules (Policies > Export Selected Rules, output .wpw file). The .wpw file will contain your rules in XML format.
3\ Now in the same window, delete all the rules.
4\ Now in the same window, import this .wpw file into WFC - your rules will be in the order in which they are located in the .wpw file (XML).
5\ If you need to, you can edit the .wpw file in NotePad++ before importing by changing the file extension to XML and moving the rules up and down.
The sorted location of the rules will now become the default display, will be displayed in the WFC and in the Windows firewall, will be saved when the WFC is restarted and when the computer is rebooted.

 

As a suggestion, I would love to see a logging option box for each rule. It could be enabled for each rule by default but with an option to uncheck it to reduce log activity. One of my block rules is filling up the log and it would be nice to reduce this, if possible.

 

Thanks @aldist - I'll save your procedure and apply that sometime.

 

No way This is not possible, the logging is all or nothing and this is not for the processes that have rules. The logging is for all processes.

 

OK. Thanks for the info. Appreciate it.

 

I have noticed on occasion the logging setting is lost, WFC will show in the connections log window the correct tick boxes, but they dont represent the live setting, if I toggle either tick box then the logging works normally again.

Can WFC be made to reapply maybe on an interval or on every reboot the configured setting?

As an example I noticed today was no blocked connections logged since 12 June, which I then knew was broken, the allowed was unticked and blocked ticked, I toggled the tick on the allowed and within a second a microsoft binary asked for net access with the block also logged (filecoauth part off onedrive), it probably was been denied for a while with no notification.

(Microsoft binaries like onedrive, office etc, keep updating in their own version paths which is dumb so they have to be approved every time is an update, wish was like linux where new binary overwrites old in same path).

 

Thank you for reporting this. I will try to improve this area in the future.

 

https://usercontent.irccloud-cdn.com/file/muipUeYy/Screenshot%202022-08-07%20193241.png

why am I getting constant DNS Client being blocked.. like dozens of them despite it already been enabled by default?

 

leaving local port (right side of image, lower left pane) for UDP free? compare with left side of image

 

It's already set UDP: All Ports by default from the WFC recommended rules however it's still being blocked https://usercontent.irccloud-cdn.com/file/BDT8CqBs/Screenshot%202022-08-07%20213205.png

 

This has already been discussed many times, after composing the rule, add svchost.exe to the notification exclusions

 

Hello, I am new to the forum. I have noticed that some users complain that the WFC icon disappears, so notifications are not displayed and new rules cannot be created even though the service is running. It happens to me too. Actually the problem is the notifications. If notifications are disabled from the WFC settings, the icon never disappears. If set to learning mode, the icon does not disappear until some unsigned application is intercepted and a notification is displayed.

I have also noticed that in app notification settings (Windows 11), WFC notifications cannot be turned on. I don't know if this creates some kind of incompatibility. I am looking for a way to activate WFC notifications in Windows through the registry or through group policies, but so far I have not been able to do so. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thank you and apologies for my English translated

 

You can manage/create rules from the main panel icon, lower left. Open the main panel from the windows start menu.
My win 11 settings have notifications from apps turned off & wfc is not enabled for restart, the program is set to start automatically on user logon, and shell integration is also on so you can allow/block an executeable from a file's properties in explorer. I do set the corner overflow to display wfc's icon in the tray for easier access to the main panel. I did have to fiddle a bit to get that notification area corner icon working. Another note: The wfc.exe and wfcs.exe file properties do NOT have the 'run as admin' or 'register for restart' boxes ticked.

 

I could not reproduce this behavior. When this happens on your side, wfc.exe process just disappears from Task Manager? Did you check the WFC log and Applications\ event log ?

WFC notifications are not part of the operating system and can not be enabled from notification settings of the OS, nor group policy. They can be enabled only from the WFC Main Panel. If WFC does not work as expected, please give more details on what happens and when, provide some log files, errors that you see, etc.

 

I'm reinstalling Windows, to see if I can find which program has problems with WFC. Everything was fine and now it fails. I will find the culprit. At the moment the suspects are Du Meter and NordVPN. If I come to any conclusion, I'll let you know. Thanks for everything.

P.S: wfc.exe disappears, wfcs.exe does not. No events in log

P.P.S: Come to think of it, NordVPN is suspect #1. I had it configured with NordLynx (Wireguard) protocol. This protocol already gave me problems with COMODO Firewall: it did not detect the VPN traffic