I have Vista HP32 &I would not recomend Vista to anyone.
I have it running fairly stable for Vista but Vista will always be slow.
I don't want to do a rant so heres a couple of things you might want to do.Disable UAC.Run it on 2GB ram till you get it more stable.
Recheck to make sure all your hardware cables are plugged in well.
If you really want to run Vista well you need to read about Takeown & icacls .Get rid of Norton if it's installed.