The "netsh firewall add portopening," "netsh firewall set portopening," and "netsh firewall set service" commands do not work on a computer that is running certain editions of Windows Vista

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SYMPTOMS

Consider the following scenario:

You have a computer that is running Windows Vista Starter, Windows Vista Home Basic, or Windows Vista Home Premium.
You run any of the following commands to open ports in the firewall:
- netsh firewall add portopening
- netsh firewall set portopening
- netsh firewall set service

However, these commands fail silently. Additionally, you may not receive an error message or a warning that indicates that the port has not been opened.

Note The netsh firewall context is supported only on computers that are running Windows Vista Ultimate, Windows Vista Business, and Windows Vista Enterprise.

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CAUSE

This problem occurs because the netsh firewall context does not work on computers that are running Windows Vista Starter, Windows Vista Home Basic, and Windows Vista Home Premium. Any commands that use the netsh firewall context require advanced security permissions to run successfully.

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RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, use the netsh advfirewall firewall context on a computer that is running Windows Vista Starter, Windows Vista Home Basic, or Windows Vista Home Premium editions. The netsh advfirewall firewall context uses Windows Firewall together with the advanced security features that are available in Windows Vista. Additionally, the netsh advfirewall firewall context offers a richer security feature set than does the netsh firewall context.

For more information about how to use the "netsh advfirewall firewall" context instead of the “netsh firewall” context in Windows Vista, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

947709 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947709/ ) How to use the "netsh advfirewall firewall" context instead of the "netsh firewall" context to control Windows Firewall behavior in Windows Server 2008 and in Windows Vista

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MORE INFORMATION

For more information, download the "Introduction to Windows Firewall with Advanced Security" white paper for Windows Vista. To do this, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DF192E1B-A92A-4075-9F69-C12B7C54B52B&displaylang=en (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DF192E1B-A92A-4075-9F69-C12B7C54B52B&displaylang=en)

For more information about the new Windows Firewall in Windows Vista and in Windows Server 2008, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb877967.aspx (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb877967.aspx)

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