What is a firewall rule group?

October 19, 2009 12:27 PM

What is a "firewall rule group"? When recently trying to install an MP3 player on my laptop, I was met with an error message that read "Operation Create Wireless Firewall Rule Group has failed," followed by Microsoft error code 0X80070057. I've searched around but haven't found much info on "rule groups." What is a firewall rule group, and is my wireless router somehow interrupting my hardware installation? Thanks!
posted by jackypaper to computers & internet (1 comment total)

The MP3 player software is trying to configure your Windows firewall for you, probably to allow incoming connections on a particular port, and is failing to do so. The software might need to do this if it has a sharing function that lets people on your network listen to your music collection (for example, iTunes has this). The MP3 player software's documentation or help should tell you what ports it needs open, and you can do this manually since it's failed to do so.

This probably has to do with your Windows security settings (for example, it may involve software that was developed pre-Vista expecting to be able to do certain things that Vista won't let it do, for security purposes) and not your wireless router.
posted by kindall at 12:33 PM on October 19, 2009