My XP firewall and updates are off, wont come back on

[un4given1]

Well I can turn on the updates but they turn themselves off after a while. But the firewall in SP2, wont turn on. Just wont when I try to... Any options here?

 

[Tommy Boy]

wow, I dunno man, maybe you have a virus, have you checked for viruses lately? That sounds to me like something a virus would do, make your firewall inaccessible so someone could enter your computer through a backdoor trojan or something.

Do you have a router with a firewall? If you do turn that on and you don't need the windows firewall, hardware firewalls are the best.

 

[un4given1]

That's the thing... I'm not using a router, direct hookup to the modem. I was thinking it was a virus too so I updated my virus definitions in Avast and ran a full check, nothing. I'll turn up the intensity on the virus scan.

 

[GlasseyeUK]

Have you tried booting into safe mode, and then running the virus scanner in there, this will sometimes pick up virus' which it wouldn't necessarily pick up in its normal mode

 

[Ronco Rox]

the XP firewall that comes with the computer is Norton Anit-Virsu correct? also it comes with that synmatic update. i just got rid of both of them and downloaded Ad-aware for a daily check up for virus and Spy-Bot and used it's Tea-Timer to block certain pages, pop-ups, and programs. but Norton blows and so does Synmatic, it just gets annyoing

 

[Tommy Boy]

Have you tried booting into safe mode, and then running the virus scanner in there, this will sometimes pick up virus' which it wouldn't necessarily pick up in its normal mode

Also while you are in safe mode you might try enabling the firewall there.