include/exclude lights problem

[dpcaltdcah]

For a number of reasons I have one group of objects that I have to illuminate with a fill light. The group has its GI turned off. I don't want this light to illuminate anything else in the entire scene. So, of course, I created a light and clicked on the include/exclude button and included only this group in illumination. but then it still lit up everything. so then I excluded everything BUT what I want lit up and then nothing was illuminated by the new light. I have tried checking everything I can possibly think of, I recreated the light, I tried different types of lights, and I can't figure out what's wrong...it's still lighting up things that are excluded from illumination. This is esp. perplexing because it worked just fine until I modified the geometry a little. argh!

 

Oh, it's max8 with vray 1.5 but the lights are just regular old max lights.

anyone?