So, windows defender was running. I loaded firefox... defender said "deny" or "allow" access to the internet for firefox.exe and i clicked deny and confirmed the "are you sure?" box. Whoops.
If you run the Windows Defender application and click on History then you will see a list of actions taken. You can change it in there. I'm using Windows 7 so I'm not sure where you will find the history button in Vista. I can get a Vista machine running if you need help looking.