Desperately need help! My firewall will not turn on.

[the.avon.lady1]

Do you want to call it a night so you can think it over and start fresh in the morning? I am sorry that this problem is taking so much of your time but I do appreciate your help so very much. Do you think McAfee messed up something in the uninstall process or did I have a really damaging virus that messed something up?

[jholland1964]

It is likely a combination of both the McAfee and the infection. Try one more tool to see if there is anything left of McAfee. After you run that go back into services and see if you can get the Windows Firewall to turn on.

http://majorgeeks.com/AV_Uninstaller_d4601.html

[the.avon.lady1]

I got the message that uninstaller could not find an anti virus program. I am trying the firewall again and will let you know what happens.

[the.avon.lady1]

Still getting this: Windows could not start the Windows Firewall on Local Computer, For more information, review the System Event Log. If this is a non-Microsoft service, contact the service vender, and refer to service-specific error code 5."

[jholland1964]

One more thing to check and then we can call it a night. I am going to be very honest, as if you have not guessed by now, I am stumped. We have tried virtually every fix I could find. But check this setting to be sure it is correct.
Go back into Services and go to Base Filtering Engine. Double Click to open Properties and click on the Log On Tab. Make sure it looks just like my print screen. Everything on yours should look and read exactly like the print screen shows.

[the.avon.lady1]

What will happen if I try a system restore like as far back as I can go and then start the process over?

[jholland1964]

What will happen if I try a system restore like as far back as I can go and then start the process over?

System Restore should never be used to go back more than several days rarely anymore than that, too many changes occur daily on a computer to trust much farther back than that. You likely may again have infected files on the computer which will again begin working to damage other files.
System Restore does not back things up like people seem to think that it does. System Restore actually operates only on a very few system files and settings. System Restore backs up your registry. If you delete or damage a file, System Restore will not recover it. So if you do that every single fix and change that has been made will be undone and may not be able to be redone because some things that have been done would not have been noted in System Restore.
Let me do some more research and see what I can find.
One thing that has not been done is checkdisk, that takes awhile though and tomorrow would be better for that.

[the.avon.lady1]

Yes, it does look exactly like that. Okay so what now? If you are stumped and we have tried everything that you can think of what should I consider?

[the.avon.lady1]

Good Morning, thanks for answering my question about System Restore because I am one of those that wrongly thought system restore was a fix all. I did know it should be a last choice option but I did think it was an option. Now because of your post I now know better. On the good news side, we have made some progress even though it might be a small thing. Before we started this process my desktop icons would not stay where I put them. They seemed to want to rearrange themselves on the left side of my desktop. To my delight before I logged off last night I tried placing them and rebooted and when the computer booted back up they were where I put them. I have not turned it on yet this morning as I am only using it right now as necessary. Something that keeps bugging me is what the devil is that code 5 that I keep getting?

[the.avon.lady1]

I have another question sorry, I didn't sleep much last night and I guess I didn't because all of the nagging questions that kept popping into my head. The most worrisome of which is that you might give up on me. Even though options are few at this point somehow it is comforting to know you are there and I can at least ask you questions before I do something that can't be undone. I thought about running a DDS scan this morning just to see what may have changed or not changed with all of our work. The problem is other than seeing that McAfee may not be gone I would not know what to look for. I also thought about just calling McAfee customer support and have them check files but then I decided that you probably can do that better than they can. I just thought they might know where it hides out that the uninstall in Control Panel and their removal tool can't reach it. From reading some on this forum I have decided the mistake I made was trying to uninstall McAfee while still having the infection on my machine. Apparently it stopped something from uninstalling that should have and the McAfee tool just can't get it done. Anyway, I am sorry for the long post I just wake up this way in the mornings!