can any one help when i try to turn on my firewall from the security center a message pops up saying, windows firewall settings cannot be displayed because the associated service is not running do you want to start the mpssvc service. i click on yes and then it says windows cannot start mpssvc service. then i tried to update and it says firewall was unable to make the requested updates. what is going on.

If you have a security suite running (like Norton IS, McAfee, Kaspersky or alike), then their firewall is probably active and has shut off the Vista firewall (which it should - never run 2 firewalls). If you are running on a router, there is not too much to worry about anyhow. The routers have pretty good firewalls themselves and running the Vista firewall is nearly superfluous - although possible without problems.