Summertop: If you can...are you available for consulting?

I certainly can. I've been connecting boxes to the internet for a long time - and not always behind a firewall. In principle, I am available for consulting, but I don't do windows. Never did, never will.

As for your firewall.... if you can't configure your OS, can you configure your firewall? And for the one million dollar question, if Microsoft isn't able to write a secure OS, what good is a firewall written by the same company, and run on the same, non-secure, OS?