After being bothered for 6 hours with this problem I kept trying. And this is what I came out with first I tried following the direction posted here:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/sharedaccess.htm .
This of course still landed me with a new error message this time for MRPAPI.dll. So I downloaded a new DLL from here:
http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dl...s.shtml?mprapi .
After placing that DLL into the system32 folder I reran the command:
Start > Run > CMD /K NETSH FIREWALL RESET .
After doing so this time the system displayed a message for me to insert my "Windows XP Service Pack 2" cdrom (no problem since I had it readily available). After the cdrom had loaded I pressed ok on the message, and shortly after the command prompt read "OK" and the proccess was complete. I was then able to succesfully start Windows Firewall.