Solved How to whitelist Chrome Remote Desktop in Windows Firewall?

I have set Windows Firewall to block all connections by default. Then I have whitelisted a few programs that need internet to work.

With Chrome Remote Desktop, I have whitelisted under Outbound connections all the .exe and .dll files (total 9 of them) in the following location:

%systemdrive%\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome Remote Desktop\CurrentVersion\




It was working fine before. Now it is showing me as offline.

If I change the firewall outbound to Allow (default), then it starts working after sometime. But I didn't have to do this before as it would always work.

In addition, I have also whitelisted chrome_proxy.exe under %systemdrive%\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\.

This wasn't required earlier when it used to work fine.

I also see that Remote Desktop Host under C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome Remote Desktop\96.0.4664.39\remoting_host.exe has automatically whitelisted itself under Inbound connections. I am not sure if this was necessary earlier. But it still isn't working and showing me as Offline.

What else must be whitelisted to make Chrome Remote Desktop work keeping Windows Firewall to block all connections by default?

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SOLVED.

I replaced 'Current Version' in the path above with the actual version number as follows:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome Remote Desktop\96.0.4664.39\

I think C: can be replaced with %systemdrive% and that should not have any impact.

I am not sure what will happen when Chrome version changes. I kept this in mind when using 'Current Version' in the program path instead of the actual version number because I don't expect the Firewall rules to automatically update when the version number changes. Although I didn't have to make any changes to the firewall rules earlier, I won't be surprised if I have to do that going forward, if Chrome version changes and Remote Desktop stops working.

Here is how the rules look now:



I also blocked and disabled the ones that do not have a green tick above as well as the Incoming rule that it created automatically. Remote Desktop still works.

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