The other day I was working on a new Windows 7 Pro workstation, getting it ready to put into production. I was about to install the last piece of software when I noticed a red X in the Action Center taskbar icon. I figured it was one of the usual notifications, like backups weren’t set up, and that I would be able to just disable it. However, it turned out to be a notification that Windows Firewall was not enabled. When I tried to enable the service, it would not start. Natch!

I’ve run into this before with Windows 7, and nearly everywhere you go on the net will have you try several things, but then the eventual and only fixes available seem to be one of two things. You can either install a third party firewall, or you can reinstall Windows. The first option is not very appealing when talking about a corporate network environment administration viewpoint. I was nearly at the point of resigning myself to reinstalling the machine, when I found the answer on this page. The answer is provided by a member of that forum named rap2pac, and it worked perfectly.

Here is the solution provided by rap2pac:

1. In Registry Editor, browse to the key
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess
2. Right click SharedAccess, and click Permissions.
3. Click Add.
4. In the “Enter the object names to select” field, type “NT SERVICE\mpssvc”. Then click Check Names. The name should change to MpsSvc
5. Click OK.
6. Select Full Control in the Allow column.
7. Click OK.

This solution works for Windows Vista and Windows 7, and probably for Windows 8, even though the page doesn’t say anything about Windows 8. The solution is simple, easy to do, and just works!