Four quick tips:
1) Disable superfetch, a process that sits in the background pre-loading data, which is what causes so much disk thrashing and so many dropouts
2) Disable the indexing service, which'll lose you the ability to do super-fast searches, but will also stop the service running continuously in the background, thrashing your disk all the while, and causing more dropouts and extra latency
3) Disable system restore, and all the other things the WinXP performance guides tell you to disable. 90% of it still applies to Vista.
4) If you've got onboard video (ie. any Intel video card, some AMD ones), disable Aero Glass. If you don't, try enabling it. In my experience, AG can lower system latencies slightly, and that's a good thing.
The essence of it all is, minimise what's running so that your DAW can have more of the system's focus. There's a load of other tweaks you can also run, but it'd take ages to get into here. Although, I've written a pretty nifty bit of Vista optimisation software geared entirely towards us muso types, so might post that when I get some spare time.
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