On an HP dual-core Intel system running Vista Home Premium, I decided to allow BOINC to run all the time instead of when the computer was idle. Unbeknownst to me, that ends up disabling Vista's ability to Restart or Shutdown.

After reading a bunch of Forum entries, I now know that I need to manually shutdown BOINC Manager before I attempt to exit Windows.

It would be nice if the BOINC FAQ could mention this particular side effect on Windows Restart or Shutdown.

I end up needing to restart Vista a lot since both IE and Firefox both seem to become non-functional at some point. Web pages are continuously loading, but never complete. Could this be related to BOINC?

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It would be nice if the BOINC FAQ could mention this particular side effect on Windows Restart or Shutdown.

Not sure which BOINC FAQ you mean, but in the BOINC FAQ Service that I uphold I give advice on what to do if you encounter specific errors in Vista. Like this FAQ.

I've never heard of Vista not being able to shut down or restart.

I end up needing to restart Vista a lot since both IE and Firefox both seem to become non-functional at some point. Web pages are continuously loading, but never complete. Could this be related to BOINC?

That sounds more like a problem with your Vista, drivers, connection to the internet, possible spyware or virus infection. Not necessarily in that order.

(I've just asked one of the developers of BOINC, he's also never heard of this happening. So with that being a first for the both of us, I think you have a problem with your computer!)

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It is in any case always a good idea to exit from BOINC before shutting down the computer, whatever the OS or variant of it. Otherwise sooner or later some tasks in progress will crash, even if they were suspended at the time of the shutdown.