Dell Wireless Printer Adapter 3300 and PC-cillin Firewall

I just bought a new Dell 924 "All In One" printer, and because we have too many damn printers in the office already, I decided to invest in the Dell Wireless Printer Adapter 3300 to share this funky new printer between our computers, and eliminate one other printer. Sounds like a plan, no?

Well ... long story short, I found that by default (i.e.: the "medium" setting) the Trend Micro PC-cillin Personal Firewall blocks communication between programs, ports, etc., that are not in the exception list. Meaning, well, that you can't get the printer adapter (think: wireless printer sharing device) installed and configured, because the ports that your computer wants to open to communicate with the device are blocked. By default. For all I know, Symantec and McAfee do the same thing, with the same frustrating result.

If you want to keep your firewall security level up--at least at the medium level--here's what you need to do to install and print. Note that these instructions apply only to PC-cillin, but you can probably assume other products work similarly. YMMV.

1. Go into the Personal Firewall settings. In PC-cillin, it's on the Network Security page
2. Click on the active profile (it has a green balloon next to it) to select it
   
3. Click on the Edit pencil icon to change the profile
   
4. On the Exception List tab, add the following 2 entries (click on the blue "+" icon to add):

• Dell Printer Adapter - TCP, Specified application: c:\windows\system32\dlcccoms.exe, Outgoing, Allow, TCP, All ports (should be OK to do), All IP addresses (should be OK)
• Dell Printer Adapter - UDP, Specified application: c:\windows\system32\dlcccoms.exe, Incoming, Allow, UDP, All ports, All IP addresses

Alternatively, you could set the Security Level to Low, which basically allows everyone to communicate on all ports, eliminating the need to add these exceptions. It's up to you, but I would open ports just for the Dell printer controller program specifically. If you have the "dlcccoms" program installed in a different directory, such as if your windows directory isn't "windows", then obviously you would change the above to match your system.

Of course this only applies to wireless networks. If you have a wired network, you probably won't be needing a wireless printer sharing device. You think?

Oh, and this is not officially documented anywhere on the Dell site nor in the installation documentation. I only got a clue when I saw a forum posting that mentioned reducing personal firewall settings to get the printer driver to install.

I used the freeware TCP port monitoring program Active Ports 1.4 to determine what was happening, and from there what to change. I couldn't be certain of the exact ports it uses, because I saw several, at different times. That's why I said "All ports". However, if you know the range of wireless IP addresses on your network, you could put in an address range (I did on my own network). Since I have WEP enabled and MAC address filtering on my router (and yes, the printer adapter's MAC address is in that list), I feel I've locked my network down pretty good. These days you can't be too careful.