Friday, February 20, 2009

Enabling Firewall Logging in Vista for troubleshooting purposes

The idea here is if you are having some kind of issue on your home network and you want to see if you are having a firewall issue, enabling the firewall logging of dropped packets can help with troubleshooting. Here is how to enable logging for dropped packets.

Enabling firewall logging in Windows Vista

With Control Panel in Classic View

Go To Start>Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Windows Firewall with Advanced Security

On the right click Properties

Click Private Profile Tab

Under Logging Click Customize button

Next to ‘Log dropped packets:’ do the pulldown and select Yes.

Click OK

If you want to log for Domain (not necessary unless your system is in a domain) or if you want to log for Public, click the tabs and repeat the steps above to enable logging for dropped packets.

Click OK

Close the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security window.

Now if your firewall blocks something on your home network you should be able to see it in the log.

To check the log open this file:
C:\Windows\system32\LogFiles\Firewall\pfirewall.log

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