There are some situations in which the firewall provided by Microsoft Windows may no longer be of use to the user. Some examples may include: installing a security suite that has a firewall provided, or perhaps having the workstation on a network that has one and/or several hardware firewalls already in place. In any case, whatever the reason for wanting to stop the Microsoft Windows Firewall Service may be, the instructions below will help you achieve the aforementioned goal. After a reboot, or any other action that would allow Windows Services to restart, the firewall will once again become active if it is set to start automatically.

1. Left-click the: Start button on your task bar. It should resemble the icon below, though it varies based of the version of Windows you are currently running.

2. From the Start Menu, Left-click on the Run option.

• Please note: If you do not see a Run option as shown below, you may press and hold the Windows key on your keyboard , and tap the R key one time, to bring up the Run Window.

3. From the Run Window, type cmd into the field, and left-click Ok to continue.

4. This should open a command prompt window. Type: net stop mpssvc at the prompt, and press enter (Return).

5. This should cause Windows to shutdown the service as shown below.

6. To close the window, left-click the X in the top-right corner.