The textbox property names are Writing Mode (Horizontal/Vertical) and Direction (LTR/RTL).

My solution at work has been to run copies of Vista Enterprise x86 in virtual machines on a server. If and when it quits working, we simply refresh the VM image, although I created the template VM with developer tools only and no MS Office and it has been running reliably (!!!) for a month or two. I have had more issues with Windows Server 2008 x64 (on our servers) than with Vista Enterprise. If another person needs a developer VM, we use the template to create it. These are the only copies of Vista running in our organization. Everyone has XP for non-developer work, including me. Vista is officially unwelcome on user desktops. I develop using Vista because our servers run Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 and having a compatible IIS as well as better SQL 2008 compatibility on my VM saves me trouble.