Okay. I think I am narrowing it all down.
Saturday, my step-son asked me to install ODN on his PC so he could skin everything. (I was so proud) He has an e-machine with Vista Home Basic that his dad gave him last Christmas. I have parental controls running at a medium to high level and he has very little installed on it and almost no bloatware) While I was downloading and installing everything on his PC, I used his thumb drive to download skins off of mine to put on his.
Here's the catch....
I knew nothing of Vista when I set his PC up. I did notice it booted funny. There was a a few 'BIOS' screens that shouldn't be there. His dad is IT something or other with CISCO and knows a lot about PC stuff. He had monkeyed with the BIOS on my wife's old PC. Saturday, when I was booting his up, I finally noticed how long it takes. Having Vista on my new PC, I realized it was taking his way to long. (MINE BOOTS UP COMPLETELY IN ABOUT 30 SECONDS...HIS TAKES 3 TO 5 MINUTES) He may only have Home Basic, but his has twice the memory, etc. Something that has always bugged me was that his dad didn't send any back-up discs or anything with his PC. No booklets, documentation, etc. I assumed he was just being his usual a-hole self and trying to control another aspect of our lives. What I am thinking now is that he has put a hacked version of Vista on the boys PC. With my wifes old one, it was designed to run Windows Millenium but had XP on it...again, the odd BIOS screens and no back-up or XP discs to be found.
I know it's possible for some hacks to have Trojans and other crap in them and what I am looking for may be on the boys PC and I transferred it to mine with his thumb drive. My question would be..how can I find out if his version of Vista is good? It passes the Windows SOftware Validation tests for updates, etc., but I assume there is a way around anything if you're clever enough or dumb enough as the case may be.