You answered your own question with one word. "Vista". in my opinion the biggest load of rubbish ever produced. I ran vista Optimum (Beta Version) on my computer for as long as it was available an had no end of problems with it including virtually the same things you mention. After I don't know how many reinstalls just to get it to boot i gave up in discussed but hoped they updated the bugs to get it up to scratch. For me this just didn't happen. You only have to read reviews about it on the net, most of who say it is full of problems. True there are people who have had a good run but you have to have just the right combination of the right hardware to make it run flawlessly. I will be sticking to XP for as long as i can or until they bring out another future operating system with the performance and stability of XP. IMHO go out and buy a copy of windows XP or download a copy of Linux Ubuntu or similar. It will be worth the piece of mind.
