quickstart
DOCTOR
THIS MONTH THE DOCTOR TACKLES...
> Win11 Firewall flop
> Router add-ons
> Chuck Start menu
Windows 11 Firewall failure
I am a long-time subscriber to Maximum PC and have a self-built desktop running a Ryzen 5 3400G CPU with an M.2 970 EVO 500GB as system drive, with additional SSDs and a spinning disk drive on an Asus X570-Plus (Wi-Fi). I tried a Windows 11 upgrade, both as an Insider and via a USB created using the Media Creation Tool. Windows 10 is running fine, including Windows Defender Firewall and Bitdefender antivirus, and no other firewall is installed.
Immediately after either update or setup, everything looks good and the Defender Firewall is running but, after any reboot, the Firewall will not run. The Windows Defender Firewall Service is continually toggling between ‘Running’ and ‘Starting’ and all ‘changes in service status’ is grayed out.
The Base Filtering Engine service is running and any attempt to modify Firewall settings in Control Panel produces an error (0x8007045b or 0x800706d9). All settings in Firewall and Network Protection are grayed out and resetting the Firewall has no effect.
SFC finds no problem and DISM Check Health, Scan Health, or Restore Health find no problem. Windows Firewall Troubleshooter can’t find a problem either.
I've chatted with Microsoft twice, with no success. Their final recommendation seems to be a complete clean install, which I don’t want to do since Win10 is working fine. Any suggestions or help would be appreciated.