Vista can't remember settings

It's been two weeks and I'm about ready to throw this Vista laptop out of a
fast-moving vehicle. I keep going back and using my ancient one running XP
because that one can remember simple things like how I prefer my mouse
settings and that I like to be able to see the mini-player on my toolbar when
using iTunes or WMP. Vista can't seem to manage such a simple task. In
fact, I've set my external mouse and touchpad settings five times since
logging into this site and they're reverting without even the screensaver
coming up, much less the thing sleeping.

It also can't find my bluetooth mouse without having to go through the whole
pairing process every time (what, then is the point of having a bluetooth
mouse?).

I also can barely see anything on the screen because the resolution is set
such that all text looks like the memoirs of a tiny rodent (and every
solution I've tried has cause the whole screen to be stretched strangely, for
text I don't need to be bigger to become billboard size, or some other
asinine thing). Of course, solving that problem without solving the settings
problem just leaves me with one more setting to change every time I try to
use the very pretty brick.