Firewall virtually not existent

Hello, I have recently had issues with port forwarding, which prompted me to investigate my windows firewall to examine which programs were allowed through. When I checked to see what the deal was, the firewall was actually disabled. When I tried to re-enable it, I was given this message

"Windows Firewall can't change some of your settings. Error code 0x80070422"

After doing a bit of investigation, I was led to microsoft's page, and was prompted to use their windows live one care scan, after which they found several issues, but were unable to fix any of them. Assuming it could be malware or a virus, I downloaded antivirus/antimalware/antispyware and did a full system scan. Several times. Nothing was found.

Upon even more investigation, I found that the button that says "Start" in the services menu under Windows Firewall wasn't even there, the same being true for Windows Security Center (which I can't even find on my system). I'm not a pro at windows security, but doesn't windows security center come with windows 7?

Basic summary: firewall and security center unable to be turned on, and its as if the actual pieces of windows are missing for them to be functional. Do I need to reinstall windows? If possible, I would like to avoid that.

Run command prompt as admin

sfc /scannow

sfc found no problems. I'm using avast! for both spyware and antivirus

Of course. I should have probably gone ahead and used malwarebytes before coming here, but here are the results.



----------------------------------------------------------------------

GRC Port Authority Report created on UTC: 2011-01-22 at 18:49:07

Results from scan of ports: 0-1055

0 Ports Open
1 Ports Closed
1055 Ports Stealth
---------------------
1056 Ports Tested

NO PORTS were found to be OPEN.

The port found to be CLOSED was: 1

Other than what is listed above, all ports are STEALTH.

TruStealth: FAILED - NOT all tested ports were STEALTH,
- NO unsolicited packets were received,
- NO Ping reply (ICMP Echo) was received.

And malwarebytes:

Database version: 5571

Windows 6.1.7600
Internet Explorer 8.0.7600.16385

1/22/2011 1:57:22 PM
mbam-log-2011-01-22 (13-57-22).txt

Scan type: Full scan (C:\|D:\|)
Objects scanned: 346411
Time elapsed: 13 minute(s), 37 second(s)

Memory Processes Infected: 0
Memory Modules Infected: 0
Registry Keys Infected: 1
Registry Values Infected: 0
Registry Data Items Infected: 0
Folders Infected: 0
Files Infected: 1

Memory Processes Infected:
(No malicious items detected)

Memory Modules Infected:
(No malicious items detected)

Registry Keys Infected:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AntiVirus 2010 (Rogue.AntiVirus2010) -> Quarantined and deleted successfully.

Registry Values Infected:
(No malicious items detected)

Registry Data Items Infected:
(No malicious items detected)

Folders Infected:
(No malicious items detected)

Files Infected:
c:\Users\david jones\downloads\whitesmokewritergeo5002_en.exe (Trojan.Downloader) -> Quarantined and deleted successfully.