How to Block a Program With Windows Firewall

How to Block a Program With Windows Firewall

Here is how to prevent a program from accessing your Windows computer network by blocking using Windows Firewall. You must have administrator privileges to access Firewall and block programs in it.

10 Second Summary

1. Open Firewall.
2. Click Allow an app or feature through Windows Firewall.
3. Click Change Settings.
4. Uncheck the program you wish to block.
5. Click OK.

1 Open the Start menu. To do so, either click the Windows logo in the bottom-left corner of the screen or press the  Win key.

  • On Windows 8, you’ll instead hover the mouse cursor in the upper-right corner of the screen, then click the magnifying glass icon.

2 Type Firewall into Start. Doing so will bring up a list of matching programs, one of which is the Firewall itself.

3 Click Windows Firewall. It should be the top result.

4 Click Allow an app or feature through Windows Firewall. This link is in the top-left side of the Firewall window.

5 Click Change Settings. It’s in the upper-right side of the window, just above the list of programs on your computer.

  • You may have to click Yes on a pop-up window after doing this before you can continue.
  • If you don’t have administrator privileges on your computer, you won’t be able to do this.

6 Locate a program you wish to block. The list of programs in the middle of the page displays all programs that Firewall is either blocking or allowing; you can scroll down it to find your specific program.

  • If you can’t find the program you want to block, click Add another program and select the program from the resulting pop-up window.

7 Click the checkmark to the left of the program. Doing so should remove the checkmark, thereby blocking the program through Firewall.

  • If there is no checkmark to the left of the program, Windows Firewall is already blocking the program.
  • Leave the two checkboxes to the right of the program (“Home/Work (Private)” and “Public”) alone.

8 Click OK. It’s at the bottom of the window. This will both save your changes and prevent the program from running on your computer.