I found the solution today!!!! 14-Jul-05
In any event the fix was......
Delete the following registry key
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsFirewall
In case you were curious, on the pc's that were affected, the registry key looked like
this:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsFirewall]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsFirewall\DomainProfile]
"EnableFirewall"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsFirewall\StandardProfile]
"EnableFirewall"=dword:00000000
On a non-affected system, The WindowsFirewall key and subkeys did NOT exist at all.