There are known issues with Vista and Freelancer working together. So here are some solutions...
Solutions:
1. Change your antivirus, The antivirus is one of the main reasons for Freelancer multiplayer not working. We suggest changing to AVG Free or If possible tweak the settings of your current firewall/av to fix the Freelancer problem.
2. DirectX...Some problems will relate to DirectX, we know that in Vista Service Pack 1 that is currently in beta, it will contain the fix. So soon, Vista should be 100% compatible with Freelancer. DX10 does have some differences that can affect the performance of Freelancer. In most cases stop it from working, Microsoft are developing SP1 with a fix to support older games.