Yeah, Vista already has an unsavory reputation among Total War players, particularly those who like playing MTW and/or Shogun. Although for that matter, I've heard that some people have even had trouble getting Rome to run on it.

So yeah, ME is almost certainly your best bet. STW and MTW both ran just fine on my old PC (which had Windows 98 as its OS), and they both run on my current machine (which has XP) with no problems.

As drone said, most people's issues are related to the video card and/or its drivers....especially if the drivers are more recent. Do you know which driver version you're currently using for your Intel Express card?