Installed xp:firewall wont start up..any ideas?

Well it has nothing to do with a discrepency between ur CD and ur hardware,, Windows OS CD is what it is,, it installs on x86 and if ur missing anything u add it at install time via floppy, also i have seen when the ICS/ICF service has been disabled for a while,, and most likely through some updates and then attempt to enable the service is corrupted and can't start,, honestly thats a sticky one,, u can go without,, but there are other issues involved with that,,, i actually rewrote my OS,, there may be something stopping it from starting check ur registry and check if any other service has disabled ICS/ICF,,, u can also regsrv32 the .dll files ociated with the firewall,, the FW came with SP2 so if ur initial install was SP1 and u upgraded i guess downgrade and try the upgrade again that should give u a fresh binary for that application also check what that service depends on its possible thats not started,,, All through out stopping and starting the service u should check the Event Log for any hints as to why the service is stopped =)