Problem with Group Policy for Windows Firewall on XP sp2

[MGood777]

I just upgraded a PC to XP Home sp2. Prior to the upgrade, on sp1, the Internet Connection Firewall worked fine. After the upgrade, Windows Firewall was diabled. When I try to start it in Control Panel, the options are greyed out and a note at the top of the dialog box tells me that the options are being controlled by Group Policy.

I had never heard of Group Policy before and so I did some searches. One of them told me to run gpedit.msc from a command line. I tried, but that filename was not found. Another one told me to start "mmc" from a command line and add the Group Policy Object Editor snap-in, but that snap-in was not one of the ones listed that I could add.

Please help. I have other sp2 machines that have the GPO Editor snap-in, but this one does not. What's wrong? Can I add that snap-in? Is there another way that I can edit the group policy for firewall???

Thanks in advance. Really appreciate the help.

[Statica]

XP Home doesn't come with the group policy editor... only Pro does. However, you can arrive at the same result by doing the following:
a) Open up the registry editor (START > RUN > regedit)
b) Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsFirewall\DomainProfile
and delete the entire key
c) Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsFirewall\StandardProfile and delete it as well.
Reboot.

[MGood777]

It worked like a champ. Thanks!