Many people find that while the firewall in Windows Vista does provide increased security, it can sometimes keep you from doing things that you actually want to do. In these cases, turning off the firewall, and then remembering to turn it back on can be a pain. If you often find yourself having to turn the firewall on and off, it'll be a good idea to create shortcuts on your desktop so that you can perform these actions by just clicking on the desktop icons.

To start, go to a blank area on your desktop and right click. From the menu that is shown, choose New -> Shortcut and for the command enter: netsh firewall set opmode disable then click Next. Give the shortcut a name like Disable Firewall and then click Finish.

You can then repeat this process and create a command to enable the firewall. In this case, the command to use is: netsh firewall set opmode enable.

Once you do this, you'll be able to turn on and off the Windows Vista firewall with just a click.