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The interesting thing about Dec 2017, of course, is that the updates that month were the last ones unaffected by Spectre, Meltdown, and the other cpu problems that Microsoft continues to deal with. Another interesting thing is that I'd have guessed before this that Vista and Server 2008 wouldn't be much affected -- I'd have thought they were of a vintage that relied on much simpler hardware. I've been lucky it seems; I put an AMD FX-8370 chip in my main machine, and it seems to be old enough and different enough from Intel's chips that I've escaped most of the carnage, while humming along at 4.1 GHz on 8 threads. The flip side of things, it's probably going to be another 2 or 3 years before the major chip firms come up with designs that to solve those woes, which means I've got to wait patiently as my PC's status slides from "almost modern" to "obsolescent" to "landfill," I've been watching my Vista (and my Win 7 and Win 10) system get increasingly overheated over the last year or so, but I hadn't thought about MS antivirus as a possible factor. Though, oddly enough, I had noticed the problem seemed to be worse with Win 7 (running MS Security Essential for AV) than on Vista, where I've been using BitDefender. I've been thinking it was internet-related, since opening up more than window seems to make the heating worse and since some websites seem to be especially prone to troublemaking. Sample of what I mean, I go the RealClearPolitics website with my CPU at 50 degrees C; I open up a couple of tabs to read some stories, and within 10 minutes my system is up to the mid 60s, and I'm not paying attention a few minutes later the cpu is at 72 degrees. And then the system shuts down. If I catch the problem before then, I can switch to a single window at say OutsideTheBeltway.Com and ten minutes probably brings the heating from 70 degrees down to 60. Lots of ads at RCP of course, and hundreds of links ... OTB has just a couple dozen links and only a smidgin of ads. It's a problem, and it's been getting worse. I used to have a Cooler Master in my previous system, but I was always a little antsy about something that involved changing the motherboard, so I didn't want to do that with this system. Fortunately AMD has finally started to sell their Wraith coolers as standalone components, and I bought one just recently to see how it fared compared with the cooler that came as stock on my cpu. And my Lord, it's a wonder! Right now, my cpu is running 36 degrees, and I've had this machine on for the last 12 hours, so that's near enough of a miracle to restore long forgotten faith. Anyhow, it's not just you. PC performance has been deteriorating rapidly enough lately that you can practically see the changes "by eyeball" rather than with expensive test equipment, And this is Not A Good Thing.

Here's my experience with AMD Ryzen CPUs on Vista: they work great! There are no random BSOD or services not starting like Haswell or above. USB 3.x drivers for Windows 7 work just fine on Vista, but you can't slipstream them into the installation, because they are not signed for NT 6.0. You'll need to have a PS/2 keyboard at hand (you only really need the keyboard). A few drivers you should not install, because they do not work: AMD PCI AMD GPIO (this one will make your system unbootable!) Everything else works just fine. I've used a MSI B350 PC Mate motherboard with 16GB of DDR4 RAM. Had to enable legacy USB, enable CSM and disable Secure Boot. After that, I was able to boot Vista in UEFI. Hope this (really late) post helps, since you've asked ages ago @WinClient5270

I was using the Qdownloader site. It seems to work most of the time, without a plugin.

It would have been good, not just for eventual new features, but also because when a service pack is released, support is extended. Can you imagine Windows XP Service Pack 4 with official support to UEFI, GPT, USB 3.0/3.1, IE11, a new crypto.dll, many more functions in the kernel, proper DXVA2 support, official DX10 and DX11 and many other things...? It would have been a completely different story... :')

You can stop Steam automatic-updates by adding this line (-noverifyfiles) to the Steam shortcut. Just remember to do a full backup of your Steam folder on 31. Dec 2018, so you can keep using the last available version on XP/Vista. You can still login and download games.

Thanks! After today's Windows 10 v1803 cumulative update to OS Build 17134.228, my AeroGlass got the dreaded error "Aero Glass for Win8.1 + Incompatibility issue... Aero Glass does not know how to hook your version of DWM (0x81)." I was able to fix the error/issue by following the same instructions (above) that worked for OS Build 17134.191 Many Thanks! -JT