There may come a time when you want to turn off Windows firewall and ensure that it doesn’t come back on. Windows appears to do this randomly (I’m sure there is a reason). To ensure that it is disabled, you can use Group Policy when on a domain. However, when you are off the domain, you need to do it locally. Using GPEDIT.MSC, you can do this on a machine.

Open up GPEDIT.MSC and browse to Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Network\Network Connections\Windows Firewall. In there, you will see several profiles. Under each profile, change the “Windows Firewall: Protect all network connections” to disabled. This will effectively disable the Windows Firewall and not allow anyone/anything to turn it back on. You should repeat this for all profiles that it makes sense on.