I use Paragon's NTFS driver for OS X; an NTFS FW drive.
Special characters in filenames on HFS+ can cause problems for Vista, so beware of that.
MacDrive7's latest is enough to result in Vista (at least 64-bit which is now suppose to be supported) to go into totally unresponsive. And it is the most annoying nag I've ever seen. I don't want or trust it still to write to HFS+ and it has other problems. Just totally unacceptable.
Paragon handles the other direction fine with version 6.5.
Disclaimer: I work for the people that make MacDrive.
I'd love to help with your MacDrive issue if I can as I personally believe that MacDrive or HFSExplorer are the best answers to the OP's question ("HFS+ on Windows Vista").
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HFS+ on Windows Vista
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