"The mind of a Mad Tech!"

Windows 2008, by default has all ICMP requests turned off. This of course can cause issues with ping requests or using any type of monitors that ping the server for heartbeats. However turning this option on isn’t exactly how it was in Windows 2003 and it’s not located in the Windows firewall settings.  To enable it, you have to goto the Windows firewall with advanced security settings, which is in the administrative tools section.
To get to the Windows firewall with advanced security, you’ll need to goto the control panel and the administrative tools. You can also goto to the administrative tools directly if there is a link in your programs bar.

Once there , look inside of the inbound ruleset and scroll down to the file and printer sharing. You’ll need to right click and enable the “FIle and Printer Sharing (echo request – ICMPv4-in) rule.

This will enable the rule and it will no longer bt grayed out (it will be green now).

You can also enable thiss by running the following command from the Windows command prompt.

netsh firewall set icmpsetting 8

To disable incoming ICMP requests, type the following.

netsh firewall set icmpsetting 8 disable

Tags: firewall, ICMP, incoming, ping, requests, windows 2008