XP Firewall will not enable at system boot

[Guest]

I am running XP Home SP2. I use Norton Internet Security with the firewall
feture disabled. In spite of all my attempts to get XP SP2 Firewall to
enable when I boot, it always comes up disabled until I manually enable it.

I update definitions and run Spybot S&D, Ad-Aware SE Plus, Spy Sweeper, and
antivirus feature of Notron Internet Security 2005 at least once a week so I
am farely confident that I do not have a virus, worm, or any other such
malware.

The only suggestion anyone has made was by a couple people who hate Norton
so they uttered a few comments and told me to uninstall Norton.

Can anyone help with something other than to blame Norton?

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[Peter]

It will be turned off if you have another software firewall enabled... if
you don't then not sure what is causing that.

 

[Guest]

I have Norton Internet Security Personal Firewall, disabled, but Norton
Internet Security Outbreak Alert, Anti Spam, Intrusion Detection, and
Anitvirus is enabled. I will disable everything except antivirus and see
what happens.

 

[Peter]

I have WF turned off because I've given McAfee control of the firewall. Not
wise to have two software firewalls, although it is OK to have a hardware FW
(modem/router etc) and a software one working together.
Remember that WF is one way only - inbound. It does nothing if you open a
dangerous attachment in an email for instance, that's where software ones
are superior because they work both inbound and outbound.

 

[Peter]

A final shot in the dark, before I turn in for the night (losing an hour -
darn!)
Go to Start/Run and enter "cmd" without the "", press OK, then enter the
following:
netsh winsock reset
Press OK
Reboot and see if WF works then.

 

[Guest]

I did run netsh winsock reset, but that did not solve the problem. To
attempt to find out what was happening I mannually opened the XP SP2 Security
window at the system boot as soon as it would open and XP Firewall was
enabled. Then both virus protection and firewall disabled, immediately
followed by virus protection enabling but XP SP2 Firewall did not enable. As
near as I can tell this sequence occuted as Norton Internet Security was
loading. The event log showed that there was a policy change at that time in
which Firewall was changed from on to off.

Conclusion? IS some function in Norton is disabling XP SP2 Firewall? If so
what and how do I stop it?

 

[Peter]

NIS will automatically turn off Windows Firewall in favour of it's own
firewall. I get exactly the same with McAfee. It's normal and OK as WF
shouldn't be on when another software FW is enabled anyway, conflicts might
occur.
The only time I use WF is when I've reinstalled Windows and haven't yet
installed the software.