vista fine tuning

is there a FAQ somewhere I could consult that tells how to fine-tune and perhaps stabilize/harden Vista Home Basic so its not such a turkey? I have media on the way from HP and need to configure this system cleanly before putting it to work.
XP's I know, Win7 I know, but Vista is something I have avoided for the most part ...

appreciate the advice! thx

 

This site has quite a lot of information Blackviper guides

 

thx. will give it a look

 

Win 7 has Vista's kernel, so it's hard to know 7 and not know Vista. They are very similar under the hood. I've found very few differences overall.

 

Here's a guide that I like:

http://bulletproof-windows.blogspot.com/

I also had a thread on hardening Vista from a while back:

http://forums.techguy.org/general-security/829647-locking-down-windows.html

 

super. thank you all. while I'm waiting on my discs from HP I'm installing Windows 8 on virtualbox... we'll see how that goes.
fodder for another post, but on my win 7 lab mule I don't think i've EVER had a hash compare come out clean, yet I burn discs and everything goes swell. what is the deal.... the utility? the system? the browser? sunspots? ufo's?