This is how You Disable Dcom & close Down Port 135

Ample of time people ignore open ports in their system. This raises the risk of security threats in the system. One among them is Port 135. If your firewall is not blocking this port, then there is risk of getting threats through that. There can be some annoying services in the background which might use up the port and leave it open. To find what ports are open in your system you can use a simple command in cmd. Run cmd and then type netstat -an and hit enter. Here -a offers a list of all listening ports and -n gives you list of all ports in alphabetical order. If you see 135 as listening then it is open. I will offer you steps to turn the same. Before doing any changes to stay on the safer side create a restore point, and backup your windows registry. To disable Dcom you will need to modify the registry file. For that click on Start > Run > regedt32. Hit enter and then locate the following - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ OLE. In this look for EnableDCOM and modify the value to N. Now going with port settings. In the same way in registry look for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Rpc. Then right click on the DCOM Protocols and delete all the values. Or simply just delete everything listed under highligt. Give OK and reboot your system. Once you are done with registry modification then go in Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services. Disable Dcom services here. They are COM+ Event System, COM+ System Application & System Event Notification. Restart your system and done. Now you can check back again using netstat -an that port 135 is closed or not.

Thanks for that tips. It is helpful on my network. But I want to add that if Firewall already blocks that port then does it require to disable that. Did you test that also. I am planing to perform some security test when the firewall is on. It will help me to stay more secure and rely on the firewall. It can be done through using a sniffer on the network.

It is much easier if you are using a router. I am using one from Linksys. It is a regular dsl router that works with NAT. I had blocked port 135, 136, 137, 138, 139 and 445. It can be done very easily through the router firewall settings and it works in really well manner. There are no issues at all right now working on the same. From the system side there is no need to do any changes or modification which might create impact due to misconfiguration.

There are many free port scanners. It can give you clear information on the list of open ports and then you can work with configuration or blocking the same. If there is a hardware that comes with firewall then it becomes much easier for you to block the ports. This gives you more powerful security support and it is quiet easy to configure also. Using router with nice security features is one of the best thing you can do. As it does not need to go in registry or make changes to the system files. Just enter your router and modify the settings.

I am using a port blocker software. I am not sure about the router, but I downloaded that from web and it really works. There is a manual way to do that, but to some extent it becomes complicated to understand all technical specs behind it. The port blocker comes with simple gui interface which allows to control open ports in the system.

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I tried the steps mentioned above and found that the COM services were already disabled. So there is no issue with turning them off. It is better for every network admin to check that there are limited number of ports left open. Because threats can use that port to communicate and download more infections.

I am happy with the router settings. I verified after blocking ports and found that they are locked. There are number of different sources that we can try to locate information on open port. Many routers comes with a kind of monitoring service. This tells you what applications are still working and occupying the ports. You can prevent those programs from using the same.

For those who does not knows much about port blocking through router can refer to the manual. The documentation that comes with router offers detailed information and steps that you can try out to configure ports. It is seen a number of time the ports are left open and they then creates a issue with threats and infection. There are number of different port lockers also that you an try out. But choose wisely and do not forget to check the features.

The safest way is using a security software like antivirus. I am using one which comes with some automated setting to deal with open ports. This is one of the best way to deal with open connections. If there is a nice firewall software in your system then you have to worry minimum for configuration. Making changes in the operating system can give you errors in future. I never recommend any to touch Windows Registry. This is the internal core file which if modified can make your system unstable.