Windows Firewall - Adding Exceptions

[AaronM]

Summary
Need to add application and port exceptions to Windows Firewall during install.

Details
I know that this can easily be done via a custom action using netsh.exe tool. The disadvantage of doing custom actions is that need to create corresponding custom actions for rollback and uninstall.

Ideally, this would be natively supported in Windows Installer. Searching the web, I only seemed to find one related article which appears to create its own MSI tables and using a custom FirewallInstallHelper.dll assembly. I haven't looked at it closely so not sure if anything promising there. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb173455%28VS.85%29.aspx#Integrating_into_Windows_Installer

Questions
Is configuring the Windows Firewall supported in Windows Installer (MSI tables) or InstallShield 2008 (via standard custom actions)?
How have others accomplished this in your projects - custom action using netsh.exe?

[Christopher_Pai]

Nothing in MSI or InstallShield native. But read:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb173455%28VS.85%29.aspx

The article needs some refactoring to work with IS2008. The TARGETDIR variables are incorrect and considerations need to be made for deferred CA's and the CustomActionData property.

[Boo-snoW]

Hi Aaron,

Did you manage to make it work using installscript?

Regards, Claudiu