Recently installed Vista Home Premium and once finished the install, Vista performed the updates and computer rebooted. After reboot, I wanted to download the Live Messenger program but the download started and was stuck at 5MB of 17MB. I cancelled the download and tried again later with the same issue, download froze. I then tried downloading Firefox with the same results. I'm not sure if this problem is with IE7 or with Windows Defender.
When I'm home later I think I will download onto my shared XP drive and access the downloaded files from my Vista computer.

Well we can bag this question .... I couldn't figure this one out and for some reason we can't uninstall IE7 from Vista .... I was using Firefox, anyway, but Vista needs IE7 for certain "normal functioning" of programs like Windows Mail. After some problems with Vista I just downloaded SUSE 10.3 and installed that on my PC.

Somehow, we missed your question.

I bought a laptop that had Vista on it. I haven't had any problems with any downloads, like FF or whatever. Everytime that I do go to download, the screen darkens and I'm asked if I want to continue. After clicking yes, I haven't had any problems.

I also have Windows Defender on my laptop, but it's basically for malware. I would think that your AV or your firewall would prevent the downloading, but I have no idea why it would stop after already starting.

Dave