currently the firewall (and ics) depends on a handful of other services. if
any one of them refuses to start, the firewall can't start.
check the status of the following services and if any of them are off,
attempt to turn them on, then see if you can get the firewall to start.
Application Layer Gateway
Network Connections
Network Location Awareness
Remote Access Connection Manager
to check the state of a service, right-click My computer and select Manage.
At the bottom of the resulting dialog will be a node for Services and
Applications under which is a Services option.
Post back as to whether or not this was the cause of your problem and if you
were able to fix it. Typically all of these services are happy starting when
asked, so we'd like to track down the cause and investigate any potential
interop issues.
thanks