Antius

Happy new year everyone, I'm using the 64bit version of Vista Ultimate, I have an ethernet connection to a cable modem & no home network, IPv6 is disabled.

When I set the firewall to block all outbound connections but allow a few exceptions, the programs exempted from this rule can't access the internet any longer for example Internet Explorer, Windows Mail etc, irrespective of what profile they're under e.g. public ,private or domain.

The problem persists even if I change the network location type from public to private in the Network & Sharing
Center, is there a way to resolve this without having to set 'Outbound connections that do not match a rule are allowed' in Windows
Firewall with Advanced Security?.