How do I block all outgoing ports in Windows XP firewall?

Solution 1:

Comodo Personal Firewall is a free replacement for the Windows Firewall that will query whether you want an application to be able to make outbound connections the first time that application is used. You will also be able to allow programs to open incoming ports so you should be fine there too.

It's pretty comprehensive, you can (I believe) add the most commonly used applications during setup, so Firefox, IE and most email programs are not blocked by default.

The configuration is relatively straightforward and the baloon popups that appear when an application tries to access the network were quite informative when I used it last.

Unless you want Antivirus as well try to make sure that you only download the Firewall installer, their site makes it a bit too easy to get both by mistake.

Solution 2:

There's no way to do what you want with the firewall built into Windows XP. You'll need a third party firewall to do that.

Solution 3:

To get the level of fine grain control you're looking for I would recommend checking out kerio v2 firewall. Back in the day when I still had WinXP setups this was my firewall of choice due to its light resource usage, effectiveness and ease of use.

Note that Kerio is a rule-based packet filtering firewall -- the rules you setup are processed in a top-down first-to-match fashion. Packets that don't match any of the rules are automatically dropped into the ether. Even though it's no longer supported it still remains to be a very effective firewall. In fact, if you've ever tweaked Win7's built-in firewall you'll find many interface and functionality similarities with Kerio.

If you decide to try it out you might find these links helpful:

• Is Kerio obsolete?
• BZ Kerio 2x Default Replacement Update (Boilerplate rules to get you started)