The Windows Firewall would not prevent you from accessing the internet and
it sounds like you can not even get it started anyway which means that it is
not running. I surely hope you have some sort of firewall protection such as
if you have an internet router which could be part of your wireless access
point. Anyhow if you have some other application that is installed that is a
software firewall or can act as one then that could be blocking access.
Assuming you do have an internet router protecting your network try booting
your computer into Safe Mode with networking to see if you can then access
the internet as needed and if you can then you definitely have a startup
service or program that is causing your access problem and you can use
msconfig to try and find the culprit in a trial and error method with
selective startup.
If none of that helps you have some other problem with your wireless network
or tcp/ip configuration such as not using the correct default gateway or DNS
servers that are usually provided automatically by the DHCP server built
into the internet router. The link below may help you on the basics of
troubleshooting network connectivity. As far as hibernation you may want to
go into Control Panel/power options to tweak your power settings such as
disabling hibernation. There may also be settings in the properties of the
network adapter in Control Panel/network connections that you can tweak for
the way it works for power saving.
Steve
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B314067
"trekced" wrote in message
> Hi all, I am having trouble with my wireless set up. My remote computer
> shows I am connected to the wireless connection and that the signal is
> good
> but I can't get online to AOL. The message tells me it might be a
> firewall
> setting and to configure the software to allow AOL access to the net work.
> I
> can't figure out how to do it! Every time I click on windows firewall it
> gives me an error that says ICS isn't running, do you want to start? Then
> when I say yes I get a message that tells me windows can't start it. The
> other issue is when my toshiba laptop goes into hibernate it seems to lose
> all the wireless networking settings and I have to set it all up every
> time.
> Please, any help you can give would be greatly appreciated. I am about to
> go
> crazy!!!!