WinClient5270

SUMMARY OF CHANGES TO THE LIST FOR DECEMBER 3 & 4, 2017: Added tip for Internet Explorer 9 on Windows Vista: You can continue to receive security updates for the browser by installing security updates for IE9 for Server 2008 on Vista. Updated information about SeaMonkey: the browser's final version to support Windows XP and Vista (v2.49) was released. The current download link points to the main SeaMonkey download page (since 2.49 is the latest version currently) but will be changed to a page containing the final version of 2.49.x when the next major version of the browser is released. Updated information and download link for Word Viewer 2010: Microsoft removed the software from their website as of Nov. 29, so a link to a WayBack Machine archive of the download site has been posted instead. Added FileHippo link to last version of Microsoft OneDrive to support Windows Vista (Build 17.3.7076.1026). Clarified information about Java compatibility.

Sorry for the late response, but after some searching around on Google, I can't seem to find the non-Electron version of the Github Desktop app. Could you provide a download link to it (legally of course), please? For reference, the Electron-based app doesn't work, complaining of a missing entry point "Shell_NotifyIconGetRect" in SHELL32.DLL, as this is a Windows 7+ function.

SUMMARY OF CHANGES TO THE LIST FOR NOVEMBER 23, 2017: Updated information about Cocoon, Comodo IceDragon, and Tor browsers: these browsers are not likely to support Vista much longer, as the current versions of each browser are all currently based on the final version of Mozilla Firefox to be compatible with Windows Vista without rework (Firefox 52 ESR). Updated information about the future of Pale Moon: The browser will soon be merging into a new browser called Basilisk. When this merge occurs, Pale Moon will no longer support Windows Vista. However, efforts to restore Vista (and XP) compatibility are currently being conducted by MSFN user roytam1 via the New Moon project. Removed Dooble browser from the list, as the browser is no longer being developed as of November 19, 2017 with the release of 1.56e. Removed Conkeror from the list, as the browser has still to this day never been updated from its initial 1.0 release from April 2016. As such, the browser is more than likely abandoned, and in addition to this, the browser is not compatible with many websites due to being widely recognized by most sites as Netscape Navigator 5. Removed (ONG) "Web browsers">"Independently based" section, along with K-Meleon from the list, as the browser has not received a single update in almost a year. As such, it is most likely abandoned, but may be added back in future if development resumes. Updated status of Foxit Reader's Vista compatibility: the current version still works under Windows Vista as of November 2017 (I had not tested this since January previously). Updated status of Java's Vista compatibility: with the release of Java 9, the software no longer officially supports Windows Vista. However, I have tested the latest version of Java 9 under Windows Vista myself and have found it to be working just fine. As such, Java will be kept on the list in the ONG section as a UNS entry.

Could I please have my username changed to WinClient5270 ? My YouTube and Twitter accounts already have this username so I'd like to unify my username across all platforms so my subscribers/followers can find me on all of them easier. Thanks!

SUMMARY OF CHANGES TO THE LIST FOR NOVEMBER 8, 2017: Added a new section: Cloud storage clients. Added Microsoft OneDrive Version 2017 Build 17.3.7076.1026 to "Cloud Storage clients" section. Added MakeMKV to (ONG) "Optical disc media management software" section. Added Handbrake to (ONG) "Multimedia" section. Moved OBS Studio from (ONG) "Multimedia" section to (ONG) "Screen Recording & Capture software">"Screen Recording" section, as I feel that the software's functionality fits in better with this genre. Added new (ONG) subsection: Outer space simulation software. Added Outerra to (ONG) "Outer space simulation software" section. Moved Space Engine from (ONG) "Games" section to new (ONG) "Outer space simulation software" section. Removed (ONG) "Google software" section. Moved Google Earth from (ONG) "Google software" section to new (ONG) "Outer space simulation software" section. Removed Microsoft OneDrive from (ONG) "Cloud storage clients" section. Added Backup and Sync by Google to (ONG) "Cloud storage clients" section.

SUMMARY OF CHANGES TO THE LIST FOR NOVEMBER 3, 2017: Removed OBS Studio 18.0.2 from "Music & video streaming software">"Video Streaming" section, as Vista compatibility has been restored as of around version 20.x. Removed "Games">"Sequels unlikely to support Vista" section. Moved to a new (ONG) subsection: "Games". Added new (ONG) section: "Games". All games previously in the "Sequels unlikely to support Vista" section can be found here. Added Space Engine and Planet Explorers to (ONG) "Games" section. Added Leawo Blu-ray Player, Potplayer, and OBS Studio to (ONG) "Multimedia" section. Added GFXBench GL to (ONG) "Benchmarking and system stress-testing software" section.

Thank you for your report. I will add that to Last versions of software for Windows Vista now.

SUMMARY OF CHANGES TO THE LIST FOR OCTOBER 22, 2017: Added Advanced Chrome v54.15.5320.0 to "Web browsers">"Chromium based" section. Added a link to "Office suites" section: "Description of the versions of Office that are compatible with Windows Vista". Added a new section: "Microsoft Office Add-ins/Tools". The addition of this section helps to clean up the overwhelmingly large "Additional Microsoft software/utilities" section. Moved Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2013 Database Tool, Calendar Printing Assistant for Outlook, Junk Mail Reporting Add-in for Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Mathematics Add-In for Word and OneNote, Office 2010 Filter Packs, Office File Validation Add-in for Microsoft Office 2003 SP3 and Microsoft Office 2007 SP2, Outlook 2007/2003/2002 Add-in: Personal Folders Backup, PowerPoint Viewer 2010, Search Commands Add-In for Office 2007 and Office 2010, and Word Viewer 2010 from "Additional Microsoft software/utilities" section to "Microsoft Office Add-ins/Tools" section. Updated information about Windows Media Player 11: Online stores/Online Media Service Listing Program has been discontinued. Clarified information about Pale Moon x64 under Vista. Renamed (ONG) "Remote desktop access" section to "Remote access". Added Logmein Rescue Technician Console, Splashtop Business Access, Splashtop On-Demand Support, Splashtop Remote Support, VNC Connect, and VNC Viewer to (ONG) "Remote access" section.

Just letting everyone know how October's batch of updates went. I was able to install all of the Server 2008 October 2017 updates on my Vista Ultimate x64 system with no issues. Here are the following updates that I installed (no .NET Framework updates were released this month AFAIK, so no .NET Framework related updates were installed): KB4040685 (IE9) KB4041671 KB4041944 KB4041995 KB4042007 KB4042067 KB4042120 KB4042121 KB4042122 KB4042123 KB4042723

The X79 Deluxe and Sabertooth boards both have Asmedia USB 3.0 controllers and Realtek Audio which should both work with Vista just fine. I find it odd that ASUS decided to exclude any drivers for XP and Vista on their site for that particular board as it should work with Vista/XP just fine, however, you more than likely can use the Sabertooth drivers without issues since they have the same USB 3.0 and Audio chipsets. If for some reason the drivers don't work (and don't let the name fool you, unlike most "driver installers" this software is actually legitimate), you can use Snappy Driver Installer to find the appropriate drivers for your hardware, which was especially useful for me since ASUS didn't bother to list any official Vista drivers for my ASUS P8B75-M motherboard either (which btw, runs Vista just fine, except for the Intel USB 3.0 ports which don't work with Vista, since Intel didn't release any USB 3.0 drivers for Vista. These simply run in USB 2.0 compatibility mode, though).

I apologize; I thought Intel introduced its USB 3.0 chipsets with Sandy Bridge, but Sandy Bridge actually only supports USB 3.0 through third party chipsets (such as Asmedia). Intel didn't create their own USB 3.0 chipsets until Ivy Bridge, so Intel never released any USB 3.0 drivers for Vista, at any period. My bad. From my understanding, Z68 boards don't have Intel USB 3.0 ports, USB 3.0 is only supported through third party chipsets. It wasn't until Z77 (Ivy Bridge) that Intel made its own USB 3.0 chipsets. So if you use a Z77 board (or any Ivy-era board), you won't get USB 3.0 driver support under Vista.

Yes, unfortunately Vista is at a dead end when it comes to modern hardware. While Ivy Bridge is fine for now, it will only become less and less feasible to use as modern applications become heavier (that'll probably be quite a ways off though). Since I assume you probably like Vista mostly for its UI and looks (as do I and many others), I thought you might like to see this. The following screenshots show (mostly) how far I've been able to make 7 look like Vista (since you can't change your hardware, you may find this solution a viable option): Logon screen: http://prntscr.com/gx85jj System Properties: http://prntscr.com/gx871c Windows Explorer & user folder icons: http://prntscr.com/gx86gr Start menu: http://prntscr.com/gx86j4 System tray: http://prntscr.com/gx869z Windows Vista's built-in apps (only a few of them are shown): http://prntscr.com/gx86sy Windows Vista desktop backgrounds: http://prntscr.com/gx863o To give credit where credit is due, @AnX and @11ryanc did a lot of work on this project as well. If you check out the 7-to-Vista transformation tutorial link I sent, it will show you how to get most of what you see here (the transformation pack needs updating however, since certain elements of the project have been fixed/refined).

Not quite. Sandy Bridge does include USB 3.0 drivers for Vista (through third party chipsets). It is the last platform from Intel to do so. Ivy Bridge on the other hand doesn't include USB 3.0 drivers for Vista. However, since most Sandy Bridge-era motherboards will support Ivy Bridge CPUs through a BIOS upgrade, those may be used to achieve USB 3.0 support under Vista when using it with an Ivy Bridge CPU. If you use an Ivy Bridge-era board, Intel's USB 3.0 drivers won't support Vista and you'll have to use the USB 3.0 ports in USB 2.0 compatibility mode.

Braswell is essentially a variant of Haswell. Neither have Intel HD Graphics or Intel USB 3.0 drivers for Vista, unfortunately. I've already tried modifying Windows 7 drivers (swapping out 7's NT version number [6.1] for Vista's NT version number [6.0] in the INF files), but it doesn't work. I received a Code 39 error when attempting to install them. As burd pointed out, this most likely happens due to missing APIs/functions in Vista that were introduced in Windows 7, which the drivers rely on to work correctly. While Vista and 7 do have similar driver models, they're not quite the same. If you really want to run Vista today, you should swap your machine for something from either the Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge era, as those are the last platforms to support Windows Vista. They are a few years old by now but are still more than enough for the average user, and the higher end Sandy/Ivy Bridge Core i5/i7 CPUs provide more than enough power if you do more resource-intensive tasks. Although Intel didn't release any USB 3.0 drivers for Vista with Ivy Bridge, this can be worked around by using a Sandy Bridge-era motherboard paired with an Ivy Bridge CPU. Chipset and Intel HD Graphics drivers for Vista on Ivy Bridge were in fact released, however, Sandy's USB 3.0 supports Vista fine (since Sandy only supports USB 3.0 through third party chipsets, which all support Vista), and most Sandy Bridge motherboards are able to support Ivy Bridge CPUs through a BIOS upgrade, so that shouldn't be an issue. View my guide here for more information. If you are unable to replace your hardware or simply don't want to go through the trouble, you can reskin or "transform" Windows 7 to make it look and feel nearly the same as Windows Vista. I made several tutorials here which will show you how to perform the process (WinClient5270 is my YouTube channel name). Good luck, and welcome to MSFN!

SUMMARY OF CHANGES TO THE LIST FOR OCTOBER 11, 2017 Added disclaimer in "Web browsers" section: Most of the listed browsers are no longer updated and may eventually stop displaying websites correctly as time goes on. Please check the ONG section for a list of Web Browsers that continue to support Vista (Pale Moon is my personal recommendation, as the browser still receives major updates on Vista unlike most of the other options). Updated download link to Google Chrome 49.0.2623.112m (shoutouts to sdfox7 for providing a link), as visiting the main Chrome download page no longer delivers a compatible installer for XP/Vista users. Updated information regarding Slimjet: v10 of the browser, although supposedly continuing to receive security updates, has not received any updates since February 7, 2017. This may indicate that Flashpeak has quietly abandoned the browser. You may find better use out of Slimjet 11 or 12, since they are based on newer Chromium versions (v51 & v53, respectively) and will most likely be able to display more webpages correctly for a longer period of time than Slimjet 10. Updated information regarding Microsoft Office 2007 extended support: extended support for the software ended on October 10, 2017. Added link to my Windows Vista on the Ivy Bridge platform guide in "Intel chipset & graphics" section. Added Comodo Internet Security and Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit to (ONG) "Antivirus/security software" section. Added Twitch Desktop App to (ONG) "Multimedia" section. Added FL Studio & Synthesia to (ONG) "Audio creation/editing tools" section. Added SSD Tweaker to (ONG) "Hard drive utilities" section.

You can use any X79 board for Sandy or Ivy Bridge-E, and Windows Vista is supported. The ASUS Sabertooth is a great example: https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/SABERTOOTH_X79/HelpDesk_Download/

Introduction: As the title implies, this post serves as a guide for anyone potentially seeking to install and use Vista on the Intel Ivy Bridge platform. I felt there was a need to create this guide, because although getting full driver support for Vista under Ivy Bridge IS possible, it requires you to use certain motherboard(s) from the Sandy Bridge era to get USB 3.0 driver support for Vista. Intel HD 4000 Graphics drivers are also not so easy to obtain for Vista, so a link to them has been provided below. Choosing the right motherboard: With Ivy Bridge, Intel dropped Windows Vista (and XP) support from its USB 3.0 drivers, rendering XP/Vista support for the Ivy chipset incomplete. To work around this, you will need to find a motherboard from the Sandy Bridge era that supports Sandy AND Ivy Bridge CPUs. Almost all Sandy Bridge motherboards, except those with the Q65, Q67 or B65 chipsets, will support Ivy Bridge CPUs through a BIOS upgrade. A notable example of such a motherboard is the Asus P8Z68-V LX. This motherboard in particular has Asmedia USB 3.0 controllers, and Asmedia has excellent driver support for Windows Vista. Gigabyte also offers a number of boards that include third-party USB 3.0 chipsets, which support Vista. Be aware that you might have to purchase (or borrow from a friend/relative) a Sandy Bridge CPU to boot up your system for the first time if you are building from scratch, as the original BIOS version for these boards does not support the use of Ivy Bridge CPUs and will not allow you to boot the machine with an Ivy Bridge CPU without first updating your BIOS. For Ivy Bridge-E processors, the X79 chipset is fully supported on Windows Vista and you may choose any motherboard you like (the BIOS update situation still applies). If you do not care about or need USB 3.0, then you may choose any Ivy Bridge motherboard you like. Chipset drivers for Ivy Bridge do support Vista and can be downloaded here. I personally use the ASUS P8B75-M motherboard with Windows Vista Ultimate, and I find it to work well (Vista simply uses its generic USB 2.0 drivers for the USB 3.0 ports). Finding Intel HD 4000 Graphics drivers: You can download the Intel HD 4000 Graphics drivers here: 32 bit - 64 bit For some reason, Intel decided initially to not support Windows Vista with its HD 4000 graphics chipsets. However, it appears that they later decided to add in Windows Vista support, evidently via backporting Windows 7 drivers, since this installer claims that the drivers are for Windows 7 but doesn't mention Vista specifically. Despite this, the drivers work just fine in Windows Vista. I have studied the driver setup information (.inf) files and found that both desktop and mobile HD 4000 graphics chipsets are supported, so this driver should be able to be used with any Ivy Bridge graphics chipset under Windows Vista. That's it! No additional special steps are required, and you may install and use Vista normally with full driver support on the Ivy Bridge platform (arguably the best platform for XP/Vista). I hope this guide helped you!

Good question, burd. You see, superfetch preallocates some applications you use most frequently into RAM. This results in faster performance (since RAM can be accessed instantly, whereas on the hard drive the data must be "read" first). With SSDs, superfetch is useless because SSDs are instant and have no moving parts unlike standard HDDs, so it takes almost no time to read the data to launch the application(s) you want to open and ends up being about the same speed as RAM. So it saves memory to turn it off. In Windows Vista, superfetch was much more aggressive with RAM compared to Windows 7, where superfetch was greatly toned down. Vista's algorithm was just not practical for systems with less than 2 GB of RAM, but on systems with more RAM than that, it was fine (at least until modern applications started to use more RAM... now you'd probably need even more than 2 GB, optimally). 7's algorithm works almost the same, but I suppose it doesn't preallocate as many applications into RAM so it doesn't use as much memory. That's great for low-end hardware but could cause a slight performance decrease coming from Vista on systems with more RAM, if you use several different applications. I doubt it's all that noticeable, though.

Anything is better than Windows 10, lol. Yes, the animations are much smoother in Vista compared with 7. The animations in 7 aren't necessarily slower, just more... I don't know, jagged? Rough around the edges? It's hard to put into words since as you pointed out, it's a minor thing. I'm not the only one who's noticed this though so at least I know I'm not crazy, lol. What you pointed out regarding DWM's footprint is a nice improvement, but that's really only an issue on lower-end hardware. If you have enough RAM and a powerful video card, this shouldn't be an issue unless you open a crap ton of windows. Regarding TRIM, yeah I forgot to mention that as an advantage for 7 in my last post, forgive me. But even then, Windows 8.1 triumphs over Windows 7 because 7 doesn't support TRIM for NVME SSDs, whereas 8.1 does. As for using Vista on SSDs, I actually happen to use Windows Vista on a Samsung 840 EVO SSD (and have done so since April 2014, nearly 4 years ago), and I have turned off automatic defragging, disabled search indexing, superfetch, and installed the Samsung Magician software, which provides the TRIM command for Windows XP and Vista for Samsung SSDs: http://prntscr.com/gu5t25 Thanks to Samsung Magician, my SSD's performance has not decreased at all over time and has kept in TRIM. Other SSD manufacturers have also provided tools of this nature, such as Corsair's SSD Toolbox and there are other third party tools available which send TRIM under XP/Vista such as Diskeeper 12 and SSD Tweaker.

I'd have to disagree in regards to DWM, at least somewhat. Vista's window animations are much smoother than those of Windows 7 (7's are quite choppy; Vista's are buttery smooth). The only difference I can find is that Vista uses Direct3D 9 to render its window animations whereas Windows 7 uses Direct3D 11, so maybe this caused a decrease in performance? Whatever the issue is, it doesn't exist in Windows 8.x (one of the many things I like about 8.x over 7); animations there are buttery smooth once again. As for the other issues you mentioned, they're also applicable to Windows 7 but the biggest difference is that Windows 7 at least is provided drivers for most modern hardware, whereas Vista is not. It largely depends on your needs, and if you need those things you're better off using Windows 8.1 anyway imo.

Gaming??? I never said anything about gaming! Where are you getting this from? Burd uses Skylake and experiences the error too. He claims that he doesn't experience it as often but he does experience it. I don't know what else to tell you, so I think I'm just going to end it here. If Vista works for you, enjoy. I really don't know how else to explain it to you. I strongly believe that my conclusion is fact and I have more than enough people to back me up. Perhaps this will help you to understand, it's a last ditch effort on my part (all of these have been tested. Not all by me, but by other users. The error occurs on all of them regardless of ANY SORT of tweaking, hardware combinations, drivers, or updates.): Vista+Ivy Bridge= ✔ Vista+Haswell/Broadwell= ✘ Vista+Skylake=✘ Vista+Kaby Lake= ✘ Understand?

You're not understanding my point at all. The issue I'm describing has NOTHING to do with graphics cards. There. That's it. Nail on the head. The problem is isolated to Haswell and all of its successors. If you run Vista on the Haswell platform, you'll experience this error at some point. Doesn't matter what video card you use, what onboard devices are enabled or disabled, or how you install Vista. Those have absolutely no effect. Do forgive me, but I LOL'd when I saw that. You don't need to use a card from 2011 for Vista. The GTX 980 supports Windows Vista just fine, and you can even use the GTX 1080 with Vista thanks to unofficial drivers (you can find them on my Last versions of software for Vista list). AMD's driver support for Vista is far worse compared with NVIDIA (15.6 beta is the last version of the AMD Catalyst drivers that works with Vista which is long obsolete and limits you to AMD GPUs released prior to June 2015). 98SE, I invite you to read more about Vista on my Last versions of software for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 list. You'll find a ton of information there about the current state of Vista's third party software & driver compatibility, and it is updated almost daily so the information there is all accurate and up to date.

SUMMARY OF CHANGES TO THE LIST FOR OCTOBER 5, 2017: Added mpv v0.25.0 to "Multimedia" section as the last version of the software to support Vista. Added download links to Epic Browser 58, Google Chrome 50, Opera 37, Firefox 53, and Waterfox 53.0.3. Overhauled "Intel chipset & graphics" section, containing new information about Ivy Bridge compatibility with Vista and a link explaining the problems with Vista on Haswell (and later platforms) in greater detail. Added Passmark PerformanceTest to (ONG) "Benchmarking and system stress-testing software" section.

Thank you for another very detailed and informative post, VistaLover. I share your sentiment and can't stand when developers use the end of extended support as an excuse to justify dropping support for an OS with their own product. If they really cared about EOL, why did they support XP until November 2015, and why did they not (intentionally) drop support for Vista until now? Sounds awfully fishy to me. Regardless, I will add mpv 0.25.0 to the list.

98SE, how long did you use Vista on your hardware? I'm asking since I obviously don't know how long you used it or how extensively you tested it. From what it sounds like to me, you only installed it, ran it for a few minutes, and got rid of it. You can't just test it for a few minutes and claim that it works 100% correctly. You must reboot the OS several times and see if you eventually run into the error. I guarantee you that your situation was just pure luck and that you didn't spend enough time using the OS (or more specifically, rebooting it) to ever experience the error. Situations vary for different users. I also failed to mention that I originally had a Gigabyte board (don't recall the exact model) which experienced the error 95% of the time, and that's when I tried the ASUS H97M board to see if that would solve the problem. I installed Vista and it booted okay for the first few tries, fooling me into believing the issue had been fixed. But eventually it just started doing the same thing as the Gigabyte board. As for the chipset drivers, I guess you don't have to install them if you don't want to, but I've personally found them to improve overall system performance. That's just me. Anyway, what I'm getting at here is that the problem occurs at random. You can boot the OS successfully 5 times in a row, only to have the 6th attempt fail due to the error and failed services. That number will vary from user to user. Maybe I didn't make it clear before, but this problem is NOT user error. The problem occurred before I installed ANY drivers or software. You can take a bare-bones install of Vista (or Server 2008 for that matter) and the error will pop up eventually. I tried changing almost every BIOS setting there was to change... No effect. Tried swapping hard drives, motherboards, RAM sticks, it's not bad hardware either. Tried different installation media for Vista, and even tried Server 2008, and the error was persistent. Windows Vista DOES NOT WORK PROPERLY ON ANYTHING NEWER THAN IVY BRIDGE. Take it from someone who has not only used the OS on 3 different Haswell configurations, but has friends/acquaintances that have used the OS on completely different Haswell hardware than anything I tested the OS on, and experienced the SAME error. That combined with the fact that Windows 7 and later worked 100% as expected doesn't sound like user error to me. Even if you don't reboot that often, the boot issue will cause a huge problem when installing Windows updates. One of the first times I used Vista on Haswell, it was installing updates before shutting down, and after it shut down, the infamous "Interactive logon process initialization" error appeared on the next boot, forcing me to hard reset. After doing so, it caused Windows Update to become corrupted (since it couldn't configure the updates on the next boot) and I had to end up reinstalling the whole OS. And even if you don't install updates, that doesn't matter. The fact of the matter is that this problem shouldn't be occurring to begin with, and there's no way I'll ever recommend anything above Ivy Bridge for running Vista due to that. I have zero tolerance for instabilities cause by a nearly unfixable problem, the fix being simply using hardware that was designed to run Vista, rather than hardware that was obviously not designed with Vista compatibility in mind. Like I said, if you have the patience to deal with crap like this, you're obviously more patient than me (and probably most other users), haha. I stand by my original point that if you buy Coffee Lake to run Vista expecting a flawless setup, prepare to be disappointed. That is all. I know you probably didn't have any ill-intent by saying that, but for the record I wasn't complaining merely explaining the Haswell/Vista situation. Sorry if it sounded like I was complaining, I'll do better next time