[sillybuttons™]

Hey guys. I have a problem with my firewall. It was running fine until yesterday when it was upgraded. I've googled the problem until I'm blue in the face and cant seem to find any help at all. The best I get is from PC Tools forums saying "We are currently investigating the problem". Yeah? thanks guys!!!!!.... When I start up my computer I get the following message
- FWService.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience -
then the usual "do you wish to send an error report" crap. Clicking to see what data the error report contains gives me the following
- Error signature
szAppName:FWService.exe szAppVer:5.0.0.36 szModName:msvcr80.dll
szModVer:8.0.50727.3053 offset:00008aa0
Underneath this is a section called Reporting Details explaining the info contained in the report and how it wont be used by them to become me and start living my life a lot better than I already am some where on the Med with a private yacht. Well its a bit more bland than that but you know the stuff they put
Anyhoo clicking to view technical information about the error report tells me the which files will be included in the error report.
C:\......\Temp\WERf918.dir00\FWService.exe.mdmp
C:\......\Temp\WERf918.dir00\appcompat.txt
The firewall in question is PCTools Firewall Plus. I'd give more details on it but I've just discovered I cant open the user interface. The icon just sits there doing nothing, being useless and creating havoc (hmmm sounds like a certain Mr G Brown) ok sorry for the political outburst lol I'm sure he will turn out to be a fine PM *cough*. Despite all of this, task manager lists FWService.exe as a running process.
Im using WinXP Home SP3. Hmmm theres another thing thats just appeared... or not as the case may be... My computers specs in the General tab of System Properties dont show up (they did yesterday). I was going to give my computers specs in case they were needed. Will a rough guess be at all helpful? I dont know any other way to find them. Approx Specs - 3.2GHz Processor(Intel something or other), 1.4 Gig RAM.
Another thing has surfaced. I tried to run dxdiag to see if my specs were in there anywhere but that wont run either. It's getting worse and worse.
Can a simple firewall upgrade really cause all these weird seemingly unrelated issues? I am 100% sure that my computer was running absolutely fine until the upgrade. OK the dx diag tool has just popped up after a good few minutes. I'll leave what I have previously written so who ever helps gets an idea of what I've done and haven't done. Specs - OS: WinXP Home SP3 (5.1, build 2600)
BIOS: Pheonix AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: Intel Celeron D CPU 3.20GHz
Memory: 1470Mb RAM
Page File: 329MB used, 1663MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
Thats all I can think of to tell yous. I'm sorry if I've included useless information or if I've missed out something important, its just I haven't a clue what info you will need to help me.