I know there are some more than competent techies here, so I’m hoping someone can guide me on this:
The security center has a message saying that it is currently unavailable because the security center has not been started or was stopped. It tells me to restart then start the security center again. Tried this, no go.
If I ignore the message re security center and try opening the firewall (the icon is there) I get a message telling me to start the internet connection sharing (ICS) service, then when I click yes, it says it cannot be started.
I have SP2 installed and use AVG for virus control together with Norton Antivirus but I don’t think settings on those are conflicting.
Generally it is not a good idea to have two anti-virus programs active at the same time doing active scanning. There are going to be conflicts. If you want two anti-virus programs installed just make sure that only one of them is configured to do active (on demand) scanning. Use the second anti-virus only for manual scans.
Hmm, I had tried rebooting before with no luck, but tried it again and got into the security center! Then it went again! I rebooted twice but no go.
As for AVG and Norton, I run them both manually every week or thereabouts and never together. I mentioned them in case they were conflicting with Windows firewall, but I don’t think either AVG or Norton provide any sort of firewall.
I do also use Spybot, Lavasoft Ad-aware, Spyware blaster and SpywareGuard and AVG’s anti spyware (what, me, paranoid?). Could they be messing around with the firewall as some kind of security thing because it’s parameters have been set by them?
The solution in 920074 looks to be a good one to try. It fixes some registry entries and resets some services. It would be nice if there was a one click method to repair the firewall, but there isn’t. There’s no firewall repair option in add remove programs.
Some malware programs try to disable the MS firewall and some anti-spyware programs can mess up the firewall settings when removing malware. Then there’s the problems with third-party firewalls and security suites messing up the MS firewall either by clumsy installs or clumsy uninstalls.
