Win XPpro SP3 up to date @ Boot shows warning message at taskbar: "Your Computer Might Be at Risk - No Firewall is turned on - Click this balloon to fix this problem."After boot is finished, the Firewall balloon usually closes.... when I check Win Firewall, all is on as desired.NOTES:Win Firewall is turned ON all the time via the Firewall Settings; Also, MSE is installed.There are ZERO other firewalls installed on subject machine.I reviewed Debleena S (MS Support Moderator) suggestions per Jan 04, 2011. Subject machine did not have any of the suggested registry issues (ie, all registry entries were per suggested changes or not existing). 1 person needs an answerI do too

Hi,· Since when are you facing this issue?· Do you remember making any changes to the system?· What is the exact error message that you encounter?· Do you have any third party firewall installed on the system? I would suggest you to check whether the firewall is turned on. Follow the steps mentioned in the article given below.How can I turn on or turn off the firewall in Windows XP Service Pack 2 or later versions?http://support.microsoft.com/kb/283673Using Windows Firewallhttp://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/security/winfirewall.mspx Also, I would suggest you to check the article mentioned below.Troubleshooting Windows Firewall settings in Windows XP Service Pack 2 for advanced usershttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/875357 Apart from that, I would suggest you to follow the steps mentioned in the article given below.You cannot start the Windows Firewall service in Windows XP SP2http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920074 Thank you and Regards. Thahaseena MMicrosoft Answers Support Engineer.Visit ourMicrosoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

I've seen this problem too on my machines. The following is my explanation for it which makes a lot of sense to me but I have not seen any kind of official confirmation on this...When Windows starts up, there is a bunch of processes that essentially all try to start at the same time. Windows has no way to control their order with the exception of dependencies in Services. One of those processes contains code to check for a firewall and display the warning if none in in place. Another of those processes is the firewall program itself. Both programs race to start at system boot. The checking program likely has code that waits (suspends) for a period of time that it thinks is reasonable for a firewall to start and then does its check. If none is in place, it produces the warning. Now I don't know about you, but my startup times seem to be much longer than they used to be. My guess is that the time that the checking program waits is now not long enough for the firewall to completely launch itself and be put in place and thus you see the message when you boot.After boot is finished, the Firewall balloon usually closes.... when I check Win Firewall, all is on as desired.IMHO, as long as the warning goes away when the computer is completely booted and the firewall shows as active, then everything is OK and the extraneous warning is simply a nuisance result of slower Windows Boot times.My advice is to ignore it as there's not much that can be done.HTH, JW