OS: XP SP3 (downgraded to SP2 due to Windows "repair")Windows recently started acting up and, after finally not being able to boot the system at all, started getting a BSOD every time I tried restarting the system. I booted to the XP disk and did a "repair", which downgraded IE to 6 and XP SP3 to SP2. In addition, Microsoft Update won't work and MS Security Essentials stopped working and would not update. IE 6 is working but the IE8 install I d/l'd from MS won't run. I did run Security Essentials and Superantispyware in Safe Mode and only found a bunch of adware cookies, which were deleted. After reading some info here, I've installed Kapersky AV thinking this might be a rootkit issue, but the Critical Areas Scan did not show anything so am currently running a full scan and will post the results when it finishes. I get this error message when trying to open Windows Firewall in Control Panel: "Windows cannot start the Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) service." When trying to run Microsoft Update, I get this error: "The requested lookup key was not found in any active activation context." Any help is appreciated.Have also run sfc /scannow, which did help get IE working.Another symptom: I can open IE6 but can only navigate to the links shown on the MSN main page; any "outside" URLs, like google, give me the "requested lookup key" error, as above. 1 person needs an answerI do too

OS: XP SP3 (downgraded to SP2 due to Windows "repair")Windows recently started acting up and, after finally not being able to boot the system at all, started getting a BSOD every time I tried restarting the system. I booted to the XP disk and did a "repair", which downgraded IE to 6 and XP SP3 to SP2. In addition, Microsoft Update won't work and MS Security Essentials stopped working and would not update. IE 6 is working but the IE8 install I d/l'd from MS won't run. I did run Security Essentials and Superantispyware in Safe Mode and only found a bunch of adware cookies, which were deleted. After reading some info here, I've installed Kapersky AV thinking this might be a rootkit issue, but the Critical Areas Scan did not show anything so am currently running a full scan and will post the results when it finishes. I get this error message when trying to open Windows Firewall in Control Panel: "Windows cannot start the Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) service." When trying to run Microsoft Update, I get this error: "The requested lookup key was not found in any active activation context." Any help is appreciated.Have also run sfc /scannow, which did help get IE working.Another symptom: I can open IE6 but can only navigate to the links shown on the MSN main page; any "outside" URLs, like google, give me the "requested lookup key" error, as above. Finished the Kapersky scan and did not find anything. Re-ran sfc /scannow to see if there were any lingering issues. Looks to have completed successfully. Am now running Malwarebytes AM; it's checked about 200k files with no hits. IE is =very= slow with pages taking a long time to scroll and many pages not loading properly. Firefox is also very slow. Still can't load Firewall and MS Update won't work. The add/remove programs takes about 5 minutes to load the app list. Windows Installer was not showing up on the list, so I d/l'd and installed it, but Update still won't work.

Malwarebytes just finished running and found 3 registry entries called pum.disabled.securitycenter and corrected these. I rebooted and MS Firewall still won't start nor will Windows update work. Still getting the same errors as previously stated. Would love to have someone chime in if they've had this same experience and successfully fixed it, especially if they fixed it without having to F&R the drive.