J – The instructions on the page you linked above are sufficient for getting BP to work with Win7 or Win2008, so I’m not quite sure what else you are looking for. The Remote Administration exception normally includes ICMP, among other ports that are opened when you enable it. It sounds like maybe you want to allow ICMP traffic through without allowing “Remote Administration” ?
If that’s the case then with regard to ICMP, I can confirm that BatchPatch pings are sent via standard ICMP, so if you are trying to allow ICMP traffic through Windows Firewall without allowing “Remote Administration” then I’d suggest you follow the instructions outlined here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc972926%28v=ws.10%29.aspx
Note, if you choose not to enable “Remote Administration” and “File and printer sharing” then you’re going to have problems with pretty much every other BatchPatch task, even if you allow ICMP just for BatchPatch pings to reply successfully.
I hope this helps. Let me know if you get stuck with anything.
-Doug