ActiveShield - inactive!

Hi All and thanks in advance for any help you can offer....

On Thurs morning my internet and McAfee virus and everything else was working fine. I went home from work at 5 and went to check e-mail and could not connect. I thought it was my cable company having some trouble but later got the same thing. That's when I realized my McAfee icon in the tray was black and showed as disabled.

Now, no one was home, no one used my computer all day and it was fine in the morning so what could have happened??

When I try to open McAfee Security Center (I only have the virus software) I get a message: Some ActiveShield componets are missing or were installed improperly. Reinstall ActiveShield.

I have uninstalled McAfee but I cannot connect to the net so I can't reinstall from my account. My system shows that I am connected. I have 3 computers networked through a router and when mine goes down so does everyone else.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
DYP