Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Windows 10 - Disable Windows Firewall Notifications in Action Center

I recently made the move to dual boot my work laptop, so I could test out Windows 10 Enterprise (kind of being the guinea pig for my organization and seeing how our development tools worked with the new OS, as well as other server and domain management tools).

The biggest "irritation" I've come across so far is the action, or notification, center messages after turning off Windows Firewall (because we use another 3rd party tool in its place). Every few hours, and after every restart I'd be shown the message that the firewall was turned off, and I could click on the notification to turn it on (as opposed to the normal action of click on the notification to disable future messages about the firewall).

It turns out that the way to disable/suppress these messages in Windows 10 is to go to Control Panel > System and Security > Security and Maintenance (or just open the Start Menu and type Security and Maintenance), and there you will see a clickable option to hide future messages about Windows Firewall. Not as intuitive or easy to find as it was in Windows 7, but still possible.

Hope this helps ease the annoyance for some who have a legitimate reason to disable the Windows Firewall.