IT and tech questions.

I have two questions.

1. I have avast FW/anti virus. The paid for kind and on a recent update of something for avast it took out my FW, anti virus remained though.

Did all things possible to get the FW back it just won't come back on. So I turned on windows FW for the mean while.

How good is the Windows FW though?

Has anyone had this issue and if so how did you get your avast FW back up and working I did reinstall didn't work.

Second question...

I have a new cell phone a blackberry curve and as soon as I got it I can no longer get any overseas texts or send nada, it is obviously the new phone because my old useless samsung low end phone always got overseas texts not until I got the blackberry did that stop. My provider claims there is no reason why I shouldn't get o/s texts but still nothing. Anyone know why and how to fix?

Thank you.

No one has any tech knowledge here- everyone cannot be as not savvy on this stuff as me? Okies.