Windows firewall problem

[Magicb6076]

After about 5 minutes from starting windows xp, I get this ballon that pops up in the bottom right hand corner with a little picture of a red shield with an x on it. It says that windows firewall has been turned off, "click here to fix the problem.." kind of balloon. When I click on it, it takes me to the "Windows Security Center." There I can clearly see that my firewall has been turned off for some odd reason. When I try to click on the button on the bottom to access the page to turn on my firewall, I get this message, "Windows Firewall settings cannot be displayed because the associated service is not running. Do you want to start the Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) Service? Yes/No Obviously I click "yes." However, when I do, I get the following message, "Windows cannot start the Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) service." This has been a problem for about a week now, and has never given me a problem before. I would really like to have at least something protecting my computer. Thanks for your help.

[glc]

Scan for malware (viruses, trojans, spyware). Try a system restore back to a date when it was working.

[Digitalic]

In services, check to see if there are any dependencies that must be running for ICF that aren`t.

Check if there are any error messages in event viewer pertaining to this and post the event ID if there are any.