The windows firewall is actually pretty good at blocking inbound traffic, and even outbound traffic if configured properly. The interface is horrible though! You can get to the control panel by typing wf.msc, but you can also disable windows firewall from the cli. Here are some other useful commands:
Disable Windows Firewall
netsh advfirewall set allprofiles state on|off
disable firewall temporarily.
Other Windows Firewall Commands Using netsh
netsh advfirewall firewall show rule name=all
show all of the firewall rules.
netsh advfirewall set currentprofile logging filename "C:\temp\firewall.log"
set the firewall log (useful to see what ports are being blocked, if any)
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="All ICMP V4" dir=in|out action=block protocol=icmpv4
allow ping in or out
netsh advfirewall export "C:\temp\WF.wfw"
export or import the configuration
netsh advfirewall reset
dumps all rules and settings and turns firewall on blocking all inbound connections
We need to disable windows 7 firewall sometimes because we are testing connectivity, such as setting up a new service.
Windows Firewall GUI
The windows firewall gui is painful because you have to enable logging, then watch the logs, then create the rule. It doesn’t create the rules for you, then allow you to approve them. It is a full featured firewall though that can adequately secure your OS. Simply type wf.msc in the run box, or if you run your PC as a non admin, elevate a command prompt first, then type wf.msc