i don't use vista so take my opinion with a grain of salt:
a) the auzula or whatever the heck onboard audio is called can be finicky and that may be your problem more so than vista..someone on another forum said if you are having any sound problems, go to the realtek website and download latest drivers from there.
b) are you sure that the fan won't spin? if i understand it correctly, on the intel setting thingie, the fan won't kick in until the cpu gets to a certain temp which you should be able to adjust in bios..i was a bit alarmed the other day after trying some overclocking and have to reset the bios (which enabled the intel smartfan type option we're talking about) that my thermaltake typhoon fan wouldn't come on..well, at least not right away..took at good 2 minutes before it came on..and i remembered this from the when i first got the board as well and it wasn't a but..i believe the system will literally not turn on the fan until the monitoring software feels it's required..so i would recommend lowering the cpu temp that the bios monitors? i use a typhoon and it's very quiet at any speed. i disabled all the thermal stuff in the bios and let it do it's thing..obviously there is still some monitoring and adjusting of speed that happens in any case as my typhoon at non overclock will run as low as 750rpm..as high as 1440 when i hard overclock