How to disable the firewall in ESET Smart Security (ESS)

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You can't permanently disable or turn off the firewall in ESET Smart Security. It can be done temporarily, but it will be enabled again at the next restart of the computer. What you can do if you want to have ESS installed, but not the firewall, is to create a rule to allow all traffic through the firewall.

Note: This howto effectively "disables" the firewall in ESET Smart Security, and should only be done if you are certain that is what you want.

1. Open ESET Smart Security by double-clicking its icon, or via the start-menu
2. Click F5 to open the advanced configuration
3. In the setup tree, click Personal firewall, and select Policy-based mode. Click OK to verify the change (important!)
4. Click F5 to open the advanced configuration again
5. Open the Zone and Rules setup in ESS
6. Add a rule to allow all incoming and outgoing traffic for ports 1-65535 (specify ports to make sure the rule will apply, since it's more specific than other generic rules)
7. The default is to only show application specific rules, so your rule won't show in the list unless you select to view all rules.

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