Update: YAY! I've progressed in my computer life to Windows 10 on a new PC with more horsepower than I probably need. Vista no longer will play a role in my life and the anger it brought me, is almost forgotten.
As a side note, when I bought my new computer, I just happened to have the same salesman that sold the old Vista driven HP PC to the original owners. They had spent almost $800 extra on memory, a different video card and power supply to try to fix the problems they were experiencing. All, by the way, to no avail. Vista and this particular HP Pavillion were, in hindsight, a total mismatch. Nice to know, after two years of fighting with it.
I have to admit that the problems I experienced enticed me to learn more about the Windows operating system than I wanted to know. Again, thank you to all the staff here for their kind attention and assistance.