For example, if you want your kids to surf the web on a specific browser but do not want them visiting certain sites, then you are likely to find the procedure here useful. The Windows hosts file is the file that the operating system running on your machine employs to manage hostnames and IP addresses. You can add websites to the entries there, and Windows will get specific instructions to block access to those sites automatically.
Windows is supposed to bring up a small window or dialog asking you which application you want to use to open the file. Here, you get to block web access for specific applications or websites through the Parental Control feature in Windows. The internet blockage procedure here is suitable for parents who are looking to restrict the applications especially games used by their kids or to stop children from accessing certain websites. These are the instructions you must follow to implement and use Parental Control to block internet access :.
You will be directed to the webpage for the Microsoft parental control for your account. There, you will see all the adult and child accounts that exist on your computer.
You will now be directed to the Content Restriction tab or screen. There, you will be able to specify or apply different restriction settings to parameters for the internet and applications. If you are hell-bent on stopping an application from connecting to the internet and do not mind cutting off web access for other programs, then the procedure here is ideal for you. In fact, the proposed method of blocking internet access is probably the most effective of the lot since it requires you to put down the internet connectivity components.
This method is as fool-proof as it gets. If you use an ethernet cable to connect your computer to the web, then you have to disable the Ethernet connection device. Ideally, you should disable all the devices under the Network adapters category to ensure nothing gets left out. If you change your mind on the internet restrictions you imposed on your computer and decide to do away with them, then you have to do this: go through the same steps above to locate the network devices, right-click on a device to see the standard options list, and then choose Enable device.
Basically, to regain internet access, you will have to perform the enabling task for all the devices you disabled earlier. If your internet does not come back on immediately, then you have to restart your PC. With the projected improvements, the chances of your system falling to malicious programs or you becoming a victim of a cyberattack get reduced considerably. Your email address will not be published.
Ad blockers may interfere with some important blog features, such as comments, images, etc. Please consider disabling your ad blocker so you can have the best experience on this website. Emmanuel Seriki 20 February - 12 min read.
Link copied. Enabling Remote Work. Small and Medium Business. Humans of IT. Green Tech. MVP Award Program. Video Hub Azure. Microsoft Business. Microsoft Enterprise. Browse All Community Hubs. Turn on suggestions. Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type. Showing results for. Show only Search instead for. By submitting your email, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Most of the time we want our applications online and connected to both our local network and the greater Internet. There are instances, however, when we want to prevent an application from connecting to the Internet.
Read on as we show you how to lock down an application via the Windows Firewall. Others may have opened this tutorial curious as to why one would block an application in the first place. Some simple and commonplace examples are as follows. You might have an application that insists on automatically updating itself, but find that those updates break some functionality and you want to stop them. Regardless of why you want to drop the cone of network connectivity silence over a given application, a trip into the guts of the Windows Firewall is an easy way to do so.
To create a Window Firewall rule, you first need to open up the advanced Firewall interface, which is named, appropriately enough, Windows Firewall with Advanced Security. Note: There is a lot going on in the advanced interface and we encourage you follow along closely, leaving anything outside the scope of the tutorial and your experience level alone.
Mucking up your firewall rules is a surefire way to a big headache. Trust us on this. For some reason, despite the fact that this is the default way it populated the program path field, it will break the firewall rule. When we browsed to the EXE file for our Maxthon web browser, Windows plugged in the following program path information for the file, which was located in our Documents folder:.
That file path is understood by Windows, but for some reason is no longer recognized when inserted into a firewall rule. Instead, we need to replace the file path that includes the environmental variable with the full file path. In our case it looks like this:. For most applications, the main EXE file is the one you want to block, but there are examples of applications where things are a bit counter-intuitive. Take Minecraft, for example. At first glance it seems like you should block Minecraft.
So, if you want to restrict your child from connecting to online Minecraft servers you need to block Javaw. Here, you have three options:. When in doubt, just check them all to block the application across all networks.
The final step is to name your rule. If you want, you can add a fuller description. If you want to tweak and refine the rule you can double click on the entry and make adjustments—like adding local exceptions e.
Our test application was the Maxthon web browser.
0コメント