I'm not sure which firewall you have enabled on your machine but I've found that both Commodo and ZoneAlarm will block the newest JRE 7 from working on the various internet test sites. That tells me that Java 7 won't work as expected on many internet sites. A simple test is disable your firewall, then visit the Java test site of your choice.. Once that's done, the java test site should display your version of Java.
In my experience here, Java 7 isn't quite ready for prime time and when last I looked, the site was still recommending Java 6Update 27 for most folks.
Hope this helps.
Grif
Just installed JRE 7 for 32-bit. Although the update shows as being enabled in the IE9 32-bit browser add-ons and Java applet scripting in Internet Options, when I try to test if working on the Java website, the usual information about my machine and update (with Java coffee mug image) does not appear. The JRE 7 update shows as installed in Control Panel programs.
Miki

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