Cannot desplay firewall settings

[DLeonR]

I went over to my friends home yesterday and today to help with his computer. He can not access the internet. He has verizon fios. After trying everythin that I knew how, we called verizon to see if they could help. After running there checks they think security was set too high. So I went to control panel clicked on the firewall icon this is what came up:
"Due to an unidentified problem, windows cannot display windows firewall settings". Now, I have never seen this one befor, neight did the guy from verizon, so I posting this, just maybe someone on this site has seen this before I can tell me how to fix it. I need to access the firewall settings to have a chance to get this guy back on the internet.

Thanks in advance for the help!
P.S. The windows in this computer is windows xp home version.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

See this MS article

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/sharedaccess.htm

[DLeonR]

Fruss, your reply was very helpful, I got into the firewall settings and was able to turn the firewall off to see if it would help me to fix the internet access for my friend, but alfter all this, I could not help him. I tried using the repair features with the internet connections and it could not find his mac address. I clicked on run, typed in ipconfig at the dos screen and it did not show the mac address. We called verizon and had support on the line and they could not help. So he will take his computer back to where he purchased it and see if they can help.
I personally thinks he has a virus that we could not get rid of. He had the AVG intivirus in his computer but it was not really installed. I installed but because we could not get on line it could not be updated. I felt sorry I did not have enough knowledge to help but I am still learning in this field.
Thanks again for your help.