How secure Vista FW

So I installed vista x64 and immediately opened vista firewall console
Switched the profile to public which has the most restrictions and disabled all outbound traffic without a user created rule.

With all of its default settings and only the rules I create for my applications. How secure is this firewall when combined with NOD32, BoClean, A-Squared,
Trojan Hunter, and Ewido Anti-Malware all running in realtime mode.

The reason I was gonna use vista firewall is because, the last time I installed security software on vista it completely wiped out my connection and everytime I opened anything trying to connect to the net it said "IPHelper has stopped responding" crashing any network app

When I opened HiJackThis "Read Only" - There was nothing there -It was completely blank after two weeks and no changes to the security suite. This happened with 3 previous vista installs. This time around, I avoided using kaspersky software suite and other apps which tried to reconfigure the network, though I must say that I am concerned whether vista firewall is all that good.

Its horrible when you have to reinstall two weeks after getting vista up and running because your network settings disappear and vanish from hijackthis.

My only option was to reinstall and use applications which avoid reconfiguring vista network settings.