Before the release of Windows XP Service Pack 2, it was known as the "Internet Connection Firewall."

The ongoing prevalence of these worms through 2004 resulted in unpatched machines being infected within a matter of minutes.

One of three profiles is activated automatically for each network interface:[3] Security log capabilities are included, which can record IP addresses and other data relating to connections originating from the home or office network or the Internet.

[4] Windows Firewall can be controlled/configured through a COM object-oriented API, scriptable through the netsh command,[5] through the GUI administration tool[6] or centrally through group policies.

Windows Firewall turned out to be one of the two most significant reasons (the other being DCOM activation security)[10] that many corporations did not upgrade to Service Pack 2 in a timely fashion.

Around the time of SP2's release, a number of Internet sites were reporting significant application compatibility issues, though the majority of those ended up being nothing more than ports that needed to be opened on the firewall so that components of distributed systems (typically backup and antivirus solutions) could communicate.