Winxp Home- Firewall and automatic updates?

I'm actually writing this on behalf of my mom. I was looking at her computer yesterday (which is running incredibly slow) and noticed a few odd things.
She is running WinXP home SP2 with all updates. She is also using IE7.
Anyway, she recently upgraded her anti-virus/spyware to Trend Micro Pc-cillin Internet security 2007. She elected NOT to install it's built in firewall (chose minimum installation). Now, whenever she boots up a balloon pops up and states that windows firewall is NOT turned on and to click the balloon to correct the problem. When we check, windows firewall is showing as ON so I'm not sure why that message is being generated. Also, the options to do anything with that setting are greyed out in the security center. I cannot disable/enable firewall???
I also noticed that her ability to disable windows automatic updates is also greyed out. Her computer takes forever to boot up and I was trying to disable automatic updates to see if they were creating a problem. Her event log has a few errors (Trends spyware scanner is hanging). If anyone knows how to fix the firewall/automatic updates problem please let us know. I've emailed my mom to send me her latest hijackthis.log file so when I receive it I'll post it. I did have a look at it yesterday but nothing stood out as being spyware but maybe I'm missing something.
Thanks!

 

There are some problems with Trend Micro Pc-cillin Internet security 2007 on certain systems that haven't been resolved as yet.

Reference

I would disable it and uninstall it to see if it was creating the problem. Reboot a couple times after uninstalling it and check to see if the Windows firewall features come back to life.

If you decide to reinstall it, disable the MS Windows firewall first and then reboot to Safe Mode for the install. Then be sure it is not set to automatically scan ALL files at boot. You want to do that manually at your own good time.

 

re: firewall

Hey Surferdude2.
Thanks so much for your very quick reply. I really appreciate it.
Yes, I had Trend Micro and had to uninstall it. I actually spent almost a week cleaning up my computer because it caused nothing but problems. I had to do a system restore to get back up and running and I'm still having a few issues myself (ugh). I'm now using AVG and my computer is now back to its speedy self. Do you think this might also be causing the problem where we can't turn off automatic updates?

 

It's a strong possibility.