Windows Wireless Display not working?

Does your Microsoft Windows Wireless Display not connect to your favorite media display adapter?  It could be your firewall, if you are running a third party internet security/firewall application on your Microsoft Windows based computer.  But first make sure your wireless is enabled and then try it again!

I found out the “hard” way that my internet security firewall was blocking communications for the wireless display connection that is configured on the fly when you are trying to establish a connection to a media display device, like a Roku or Amazon Fire or probably any other wireless display enabled device.

The quick way I found out that my third party software firewall was causing the display to not work was by disabling the third party software firewall, temporarily of course, and then trying to connect to the display device.  If you were successful in connecting to the display device after disabling the third party software firewall, well then your firewall is causing the issue. But if you are still unable to connect to the display device, then it will require more investigating as to why you are unable to connect to the display after disabling the firewall.

So if you disabled the third party software firewall on your system and the connection to your display device was successful you will need to create a rule in the third party software firewall that sets the wireless network which is created for the wireless display as a “trusted” network. Now every third party software firewall application can call this type of network by different names, some call it a “home” or “work” network and some just call it a trusted network. Either way you need to create a rule!

I use Comodo Internet Security so I will show you how to make a rule for the wireless display to work.  I suggest reading through these directions first before attempting to work through the problem.  There are somethings that have to be done in a timely manner otherwise you will get stuck on some of the steps.

Right click on your network connection icon in the task bar and click “Open Network and Sharing Center”, or you can get to it from the control panel.  Leave the Network and Sharing Center window open.

You will need to attempt to make a connection via the wireless display, after you attempt to make the connection quickly switch back over to the network and sharing center window.

You will now see that there is a new network listed, click on the name of the network.  For instance the name of the network that appeared is “Local Area Connection * 13 DIRECT-roku-325-2F0717”

Click on the name of the network on the right side.  This will open a status window of the network.

Click on “Details”

This will show you the network address that is being used for the wireless display network.  Now the limited times that I have done this I have not had the network address change, but if it does at some point the address changes then you will need to update your rule to fix the issue and this might need to be done if you connect to other devices as well.

Now either right down the address or remember it!

The follow directions will be shown for Comodo Internet Security version 10.  If you are using another application then you will have to either do a search on how to get into the firewall settings or just start poking through the settings of the application until you find a section to create a rule for the firewall.

1. Open the control panel for the Comodo Internet Security application and click “Settings”
2. Click on “Firewall” and then “Network Zones”
3. Click on “Add” and then “New Network Zone”
4. You can name the zone whatever you like, for simplicity I called my zone “Wireless Display” and then click “Ok”
5. Now click on the name of the new zone and then click “Add” and then “New Address”
6. Change the drop down to “IPv4 Single Address” and then enter the address that you wrote down (or memorized) from earlier and then click “OK”
7. You will now have a new address listed under the name of the zone you created.
8. Click on “Global Rules” from the left side of the settings window
9. Click Add, type in a description of the rule.  “Wireless Display” if you want
10. Change the “Type” to network zone and then change the “zone” to the zone that you created earlier.
11. That rule should have been created at the top of the rules, as long as it is above the very last rule (the block rule) then you should be able to continue to the final step below.
12. If everything looks ok, click “OK” to save those settings and then try connecting to your wireless display device!

You should be successful in making that connection now!