XP SP2 and firewall not turning on

**jakkwb** · August 1st, 2005, 10:17 AM

Greetings everyone-

I have a Dell Dimension unit that shipped with XP Home and SP1 preloaded. It was brought in with the usual problems - viruses, spyware, etc....

Anyway, it appears to be clean now. So I installed SP2 on it. It went well, except the firewall will not start.

When I try to activate it in Windows security center, I get the following message: We're sorry. the security center could not turn on Windows firewall..... It tells me to try to activate it from Control Panel, Windows Firewall. Well, I went there, and all the options are grayed out - it is set to off.

I have tried the netsh command to reset everything, but it didn't work.

I have also uninstalled and reinstalled SP2, and ran a sfc - neither worked.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks, (more coffee)

A

**3fingersalute** · August 1st, 2005, 10:19 AM

Are you using an account with administrative rights?

**jakkwb** · August 1st, 2005, 10:22 AM

Yah, windows-control-panel-users shows it to be an administrator account.

**Fatal0E** · August 1st, 2005, 08:26 PM

I think the internet connection sharing service has to be turned on for it to work, might check that

**Snoochie** · August 2nd, 2005, 08:05 AM

See if any of this information helps:

FIREWALL DEAD, or other network issues:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/892350

MS antispyware tool disables Windows Firewall (or to reset firewall):
Start>Run cmd [enter]
netsh winsock reset catalog [enter]
Follow prompts and reboot.

**BOB IROC** · August 2nd, 2005, 10:59 AM

I have seen security software suites such as McAffee Security center or Norton Internet Security that will disable the firewall because they have a feature to override it. Is any of that installed and configured to take over?