Opening Ports in Windows 7 Firewall

Maximumpcguides.com offers a very easy-to-follow guide on opening a port in Windows 7′s firewall.  I had thought that simply setting up a service to run and making sure that that service was listed as “approved” in the firewall, as well as making sure my router had the port open that I would be good to go.  Sadly it was not that simple.  One tool that helped me realize that this was the problem was uTorrent’s port checker URL: http://www.utorrent.com/testport?port=80.  Simply change the port number at the end of the URL to test if the port is open on your firewall.  If it isn’t, follow the above guide.

Here are the steps I followed, in case the above mentioned guide becomes unavailable:

1. Browse to the Advanced Settings of the Windows Firewall
2. Select Inbound Rules in the left column
3. Select New Rule in the right column
4. Select Port in the rule wizard
5. List the port(s) that you want opened
6. Select Allow the Connection
7. Specify where you would like the rule applied
8. Name the rule and click Finish.