turn off the firewall at Windows Server 2008 R2

1. type "oobe" at the command line to open the "Initial Configuration Tasks" pane
2. click on "Configure Windows Firewall"
3. click on "Turn Windows Firewall on or off" at the pane which appears
4. the rest will be obvious

I found I needed to do this to get two instances of Windows Server 2008 R2 running in two VMWare VMs to ping each other, or at least, I should say, to get one to ping the other. There might be a better way around this problem, but this hack works.