Updated manually to Avast Free 7.0.1451 now Application Layer Gateway fails to start, Notification that windows firewall is off, although it does come on, but no alg.exe running in task manager or not running in sevices....XP Pro sp3
Added...I seemed to have fixed this by setting Avast to load after other system services...alg.exe is now running at start up, shows in task manager and in services, no problems now with windows firewall...all seems well.