The Windows firewall/internet connections service requires the following services to be running for it to start:

Network connections (default setting is manual startup)

Windows management Instrumentation (default setting is automatic startup)

Event log (default setting is automatic startup)

Remote procedure call (RPC) (default setting is automatic startup: actually if this service was not running, most of Windows would fail to work)

You can check these in services: click start, run, type services.msc, click OK. In the window that opens, scroll down to each of the above, check to see if they are running (status column should say started) and that the startup type is as indicated above. If they are all running, you could in the same window see if you can start the Windows firewall/interconnection service manually. If not, see if any related error logs are created in event viewer: click start, run, type eventvwr.msc, click OK. In the window that opens, in the left pane, click first on system to show system event logs in the right pane; look for any error event logs around the time you got the error message about the service not being able to be started; if an error message is found, double click on it to open its properties page. Note Source and event ID and what it says in the description box; if you are on line, clicking the link in the description box will bring up a help and support page from MS that may give more info.

Repeat for application events.

I just came accross this post on another forum. Maybe it would help you:

http://castlecops.com/postt116771.html