I subscribed to the 90-day trial ms onecare package.
the ms windows firewall seems to periodically, and without annunciation, shut itself off: "windows firewall service is not running."
attempts to turn it on yield, "due to an unidentified problem, Windows cannot display windows firewall settings"
it's set for "automatic upgrade," and automatic upgrade appears to be functioning normally. yet, in an attempt to get it running by "kicking" it, I pressed the manual upgrade button; this yielded, "Windows firewall was unable to make the requested updates."
windows firewall has been problematical since the beginning (about 5-6 weeks ago): i was on the phone with 2 ms techs for nearly 4 hours (countless reboots) to have vista's "windows security center" recognize windows firewall.
i recently downloaded, from RealNetwork Website, and installed - but never actually used - Real Player. It was not until after i installed that i read RealPlayer's eula. it says that "i agree" to have RealNetwork reconfigure my firewall, open the udp port, install cookies from different companies (Rhapsody, Mozilla, to name two), and certain other liberties (details elude me at this moment).
thinking that there may be a connection between this instant windows firewall incident and the RealPlayer bundled adware shenanigans, i uninstalled RealPlayer (one day after i installed it) - notwithstanding that windows firewall has, as i've said, ceased before.
do you think RealPlayer installed a piece of malware?
anyway, what can i do about getting windows firewall turned on? .... or should i just disable windows firewall and uninstall the entire ms onecare package? i've been told that packages consume a lot of resources and are, pound-for-pound. significantly less effective than independent units. if you recommend the latter strategy then please recommend products for the units: antivirus, antispyware, registry cleaner, disk cleanup, disk defragmenter, monitor for open ports, ...
many thanks.