Denny,
TestStand 4.0 does not officially support Windows Vista, so there is no guarantee that any features of TestStand will work. TestStand 4.1 (evaluation available here: https://lumen.ni.com/nicif/us/teststand3/content.xhtml) is completely compatible with Vista, so will work.
In your case, I'm betting that the problem is that the access database is in the Program Files directory. On Windows Vista, the Program Files directory is not writable except by administrators. If you launch the TestStand Sequence Editor with administrator access, it will be able to write to the database. Although this might fix your problem, I really don't recommend using TestStand 4.0 with Vista as we had to make many changes to ensure compatibility.
Josh W.
Certified TestStand Architect
Formerly blue