firewall not opening

[aba]

Hi, my pc is an Insignia d400 w/ pentium 4 2.8 hgz. have xp home w/ SP2. Aol to connect to internet. problem started when i was trying to erase junk from my pc, don't even remember what i erased but after that windows firewall didn't work anymore. First i tried opening in diff. ways but when i try to open it i get a message...."windows firewall setting cannot be dysplayed because the associated program is not running. do you want to start the windows firewall/internet connection sharing(ics)? when clicking yes it syas the servoce could not be started". That way it does not open. I tried doing all the aol fixes, cache reset, internet temporary files erase, and winsock. Reinstalled tcp\ip, xp sp2, aol, ie, norton antivirus, mcafee firewall but didn't work. Tried repairing the files on xp but didn't work. Ran windows antispyware, adaware, spy sweeper and spybooth but nothing happened. don't know what else to do. pls advice.

note: i beleive this has something to do w/ this prob because before it was not happening: when browsing ie won't open some sites. tried reseting settings and configuring them in many ways but didn't worked. Example: when signing in at hotmail get white page "Page cannot be displayed", when connecting to windows update cannot connect, when trying a secure page won't work.

txs.
aba

 

[kashifns]

It seems to be all of your secure pages are not working. You may have a look on the article http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=870700 and see if it resolves your issue.

About your Firewall issue. It seems to be that service could not be started due to some problem. Please go to Administrative Tools --> Services --> Windows Firewall/ Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) service is not disabled and started. If it fails then check the event log and let us know the error it is throwing if it is not started.

 

[aba]

Txs for anwsering. the error i get when i try to start it is "error 1058: service cannot be started either because its disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it."
and about the article, i tried all of that except for creating a new user but think since i have two different users in this pc and both have same problems, it wont work.
I am having slow connection when getting into internet and believe that's also the reason...it hangs up for a while, nothing relevant runs in task manager and after 5 min or so it defrizes and i can get into internet without a problem, except for the "page cannot be displayed" errors.