Firewall Problems in sp2

I just completed a day's work with one of your techs in the spyward forum - he was great - and he helped me to get a clean log. He told me to install sp2, and I just happened to have a cd of it from my other computer at home, and so I did as instructed, I installed it.

Everything seemed to go okay, except when I tried to access my firewall. I get this message:

"Due to an unidentified problem, windows cannot display my firewall settings."

Can anyone help me?

Thanks,

BLG

 

Let me guess, OEM version of Win XP SP2? What he meant is to either download SP2 from microsoft.com, or order the SP2 disk from them, not use an OEM version of XP for another machine if that is what you did..

 

I'm not sure what you mean by OEM sp2? What does OEM stand for?

Let me explain. I have two computers, one at home and one at the office. When my hard drive at home died, I replaced it and after ordering the cd of sp2 from microsoft, I installed it on that computer. That was three months ago.

Recently, my work computer started acting strangely. The guy on the spyware forum helped me to get my work computer clean, and since that computer was not up to date with sp2, I took the sp2 disk that I had ordered from microsoft and installed it. That's when I got this message saying that I couldn't see my firewall settings. So, I didn't install some other xp OEM version. I only installed the sp2 disk from microsoft that I had used before and which they say you can do on the cd jacket.

If I'm not understanding something you are saying, its not intentional.

BLG

 

Try the steps outlined HERE.

 

Insomniac,

Thank you very much. I've only now been able to do what you suggested and it has helped. I'm much closer to my goal of being able to shut down my windows firewall and download one that Major Geeks recommends.

However, here's my remaining problem. I downloaded the sharedaccess.reg and followed the steps outlined in the link you provided me. I ran from the Command Prompt: NETSH FIREWALL RESET.

After this, I was able to open up my firewall to see my settings. This is great! However, I still cannot change anything. The page does not respond to my mouse. I did notice at the top of that window these words: "For your security, some settings are controlled by group policy."

Do you know what this means and what I need to do to actually be able to edit my firewall and turn it off when I need to.

Please note: I did not run the the last-resort solution outlined on the link you provided me. In otherwords, I did not run this:

rundll32 setupapi,InstallHinfSection Ndi-Steelhead 132 %windir%\inf\netrass.inf

Should I do this last step? Or do you think there is a network problem that is not allowing me to alter the firewall. My computer is networked with my secretary's, but only I have interent access. I guess the reason I am asking is to see what the "group policy" might mean.

Can you help? Thanks.

BLG

 

Group Policy is a centralised way of managing computers in a network.

For example, you (The administrator) creates a rule/s that is then applied across the network computers.

I can't say, without seeing the PC, exactly what is going on.

Do you have Admin privileges, and are there any group policies invoked?

You can check them in Group Policy in Administrative Tools in Control Panel.

 

BTW, I've just noticed that you want to turn the Windows Firewall off and install a better one, which is a good idea.

Can you do so from the Security Center in Control Panel?

 

Quick question. Are you running XP? If so, is it HOME or PRO?

 

could he not just go to start menu-run- type services.msc- ICS/Firewall-stop/or disable