I made a new password for my user account in Vista and forgot it and had a bad password hint. Is there anyway to log in again or do I have to reinstall Vista and lose everything?

Is this machine join to domain? If yes, then you can get someone with domain admin rights to reset the passwordof local account for you. FYI, this is a Windows Server 2008 forums. You might want to post question related to Windows Vista in it's own forum which can be access from following link:: http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/default.aspx?ForumGroupID=204&SiteID=17

If it's not joined to a domain, download this utility which lets you change password "offline". Be sure to read the instructions before you start. http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/