i’m running CPF with Win Server 2003 SBS edition and have a problem accessing some of the controls in CPF.
for example, when I click “Network Monitor” to access the Network Control Rules, none of the buttons “Turn On”, “Turn off”, “Add”, “Edit”, "Remove’, “Move Up”, “Move Down” do anything when I click on them! The right-click menu which has the items “Add Rules”, “Edit”, “Remove” etc. etc. works fine.
the bottom line is I can’t turn any feature of the firewall ON because it is all off by default and nothing happens when I click the “Turn On” button !
is it possible your custom controls don’t work under Win2003 ? As previously mentioned, the right-click menu works fine, but that’s probably because that is a standard windows control, all the buttons at the top though are custom controls which makes me think that the problem is they don’t work quite right under Win2003.
CPF is a very good product and I am keen to use it…if anyone knows even an .ini or reg hack to turn the thing on that would be cool too.
I do notice that nchtj managed to sort this out on his own - here’s my findings and suggestions anyway! (Might help out someone else searching the forums)
It seems as if the controls (turn off, turn, on, add, edit, remove etc.) at the top of both the Application Control Rules and Network Control Rules pages are disabled whenever CPF’s Security Level is not Custom (i.e. Allow All or Block All). As nchtj rightly pointed out, right-clicking on the rule list allows the user to add/remove as per normal, bypassing this limitation. I don’t think this is Windows 2003-specific; I have verified this behaviour on my Windows XP SP2 box.
Now for a feature request (egemen, this may be what you were referring to, but I’ll say it all the same)… Would it be possible to enable the use of these buttons when the Security Level is not Custom? I’d find it useful. For example, I could set the Security Level to “Block All” before making a whole list of rules changes, to provide further protection before I enable them. It would also then be consistent with the right-click behaviour.