[color:"orange"]Sorry it took so long...real life has a tendency to hijack you.[/color]
That's ok, I have not had any time to play myself (if not tomorrow, hopefully tuesday).
[color:"orange"]Hopefully, this helps out some[/color]
It does. For the quick tests I did before I just exited and entered the BF to have the merchants generate new equipment, and bought a random selection. Unless you report buying corrupt items as well, though, I should concentrate on dropped and found equipment.
If I continue with your save for at least a couple hours and don't find any corrupt equipment, then the problem is probably with the item generation in Vista. If I find such items the problem may be with the item index file in the save folder.
In the category of randomly trying things to see if they will help...
While the problem is most likely related to Vista (compatibility or immature drivers), it could (in theory) be hardware related (Vista systems being newer and more likely to have multi-core CPUs, etc). Programs written and tested on single core CPUs which work fine can have bugs when run on multi-core CPUs, though I don't know if anyone is playing BD on an XP multi-core CPU system, so I have no information to support or disprove this wild speculation.
A few people had sound problems with Divine Divinity on multi-core systems which in a couple cases could be fixed by setting the game to run on a single core. It can't hurt to try this for BD.
see;
Sound errors with static - maybe fix found!
