Monday, October 04, 2010

Enabling Ping responses in Windows 7

Out of the box if you Ping a Windows 7 host you will recieve "Request Timed Out". This is because the Windows 7 firewall is blocking ICMP echo requests. If this is causing you problems and you need to open up access to ping requests it is fairly simple.

  1. Go to the "Windows Firewall" in the Control Panel.
  2. On the left hand side click "Advanced Settings"
  3. Click on "Inbound Rules"
  4. Right click on "Inbound Rules" and choose "New Rule"
  5. Select "Custom (Custom Rule)" and press "Next"
  6. Select the (default) "All Programs" and press "Next"
  7. Change the Protocol type from "Any" to "ICMPv4"
  8. Unless you want to restrict the ping response choose the option "Any IP address". (This is for your adapter.)
  9. Unless you want to restrict which hosts can ping you choose "Any IP address".
  10. On the Action screen ensure it is an "Allowed" connection.
  11. Leave all three check boxes check on the Profile screen.
  12. On the final screen, Name, give it a meaningful name such as "Echo Ping Request"
  13. Finally click finish.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Whilst this does work, there is already a rule already defined, it is just disabled by default. Take a look at your inbound rules, and look for "File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request - ICMPv4-In)" and same for ICMPv6. There should be 3 rules defined, one for private, one domain, and one public. Turn on the ones you need.

Not entirely sure why Microsoft bundled this under "File and Printer Sharing" though. It's no wonder most people miss it.