G’day !Donovan,
Keep in mind MS is going to end the Windows XP support on 8th of April 2014, if I were you I would switch from Vista to W8 and if you wait a bit longer MS is going to release W8.1 soon to to bring back the Start button a boot to desktop option as we always have from Windows 3.1 to W7 if anybody remember that far back
Is not a great idea to turn back the old software clock when it’s going to run out soon, better grab W8 and install Classic Shell or wait until W8.1 when it’s release that way you have the latest software and drivers for the long term.