TSNH

Here's a copy paste of a report with my experiences with this advapi32.dll patch, until now being on win32's patreon it was probably also "members only" : I was probably the first user testing it, there were no comments before. That's how it was before: Tons of services failing to start, UAC being super-annoying, USB drivers that used to BSOD the system, with the patch don't

To verify which timer is in use, get falco PhenomII Tweaker and run TimerCheck.exe, not the tweaker's main exe Read the value right on the top called QPC freq: PM Timer = 3.579545 Mhz HPET *classic* = 14.31818 MHz HPET new Intel = 19.200000 Mhz TSC = On Win7+ = CPU_BASE_FREQ/1024, On WinXP = CPU_BASE_FREQ, On Win10 1803+ = usually upscalled to 100MHz

On the LSC patreon site, there is a patcher that edits advapi32.dll from your system, there are also instructions on how to patch it manually. The access to it available only to paid subscribers of the Supermium support, however the patcher itself contains no DRM-like elements https://www.patreon.com/win32 Modern motherboards have no setting to disable HPET, you could modify the BIOS, or I've heard you could disable it when you load Windows using GRUB, myself I've tried neither of those methods yet. Windows 7 and up don't use it by default on modern (Nehalem and up I think) systems except from time to time to resync. Vista does use it as the main timer https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/sysinfo/acquiring-high-resolution-time-stamps Also Windows 7 and newer accept bcdedit entries that control which timer is in use: https://sites.google.com/view/melodystweaks/misconceptions-about-timers-hpet-tsc-pmt#h.bbv7ue62w883 Vista does not. With equal timers used, yes, with a modern Intel HPET that is 5 times slower than it used to be, it loses to systems that are able to utilize TSC. EDIT: Now I ran this benchmark again on Ivy-bridge and it mostly takes like 700-800 ns, so maybe it's only 3 times slower but still

I've made some benchmarks comparing TSC vs. HPET timers impact for CPU's gaming performance and spoiler: it matters quite a bit. First a little bit of history/background: PM Timer (ACPI Power Management timer) is a high-latency timer used in Windows 2000 days, it clocks at 3.579545 Mhz TSC is a low-latency timer on the CPU, originally, it clocked at the same freq as the CPU, it is used by Windows XP by default So when CPUs started downclocking to save power TSC would also downclock, that's why with Vista Microsoft opted for: HPET is a high-latency timer on the motherboard, used by Windows Vista, it clocks at for example 14.31818 MHz on Ivy-Bridge and 19.200000 Mhz on Alder Lake, it is unstable on newer Intel platforms. Vista fallbacks to PM timer when HPET is not available Invariant TSC is a TSC (low-latency) that always clocks at the CPU's base freq regardless of whether it pawer-saves or turboes, it is used by Windows 7+, but Windows XP can use it too as it would an old-school TSC. On older platforms where TSC is not invariant Windows 7 uses HPET just like Vista Windows 7 still uses HPET to sync TSC from time to time, but XP can still work stable on newer system without it so Vista should also be able to if forced to use TSC. Benchmarks were performed on 12th gen Alder Lake i5-12600, DDR5-4800MT/s, NVIDIA 3090 Windows 10 has all of it's new security mitigations that impact performance disabled, all systems are debloated, all systems have Meltdown/Spectre patches disabled/ not applited, BIOS patch that allows Vista and 7 to properly use turbo on Alder Lake is applied The benchmark was Cinebench R15 OpenGL, with a 3090 this benchmark is almost exclusively CPU-bottlenecked Here are the results (a median run out of 3 for each config), lowest to highest 215.15 FPS - Windows 10 HPET 221.91 FPS - Windows 8.0 HPET 234.92 FPS - Windows Vista HPET 242.84 FPS - Windows 10 TSC 257.58 FPS - Windows 8.0 TSC Vista TSC is dnf cause I don't know of any way to force it to use it, the code could still be there left from XP times. Vista HPET on ivy-bridge usually scores higher than 10 TSC, but lower than Windows 7 TSC, Windows 8.0 TSC also wins there being marginally better than 7, but I don't have all of those systems installed on ivy-bridge to provide a benchmark right now, and these are results I remember from back when I did This makes sense since when I run falco PhenomII Tweaker's Timer Check (Tweaker is only for AMD PhenomII, but timer check is universal), it runs a benchmark of running 1 Million QueryPerformanceCounter calls. On Alder Lake it takes 2243ms, whiles on Ivy-bridge around 750ms, So Intel's new HPET is around 3 times slower than the old one Now, after @win32 created his new patch for Haswell+ Vista instability Vista is now very much usable on 12th gen Intel - there is absolutely 0 serious crashes but the stability is not yet perfect - 3 services and startup programs still sometimes fail to start. So the question is obviously how to force TSC on Vista for improved stability and performance?

/s is the destination (in MBR disk S: should be active partition) Yes - it should be the C:\Windows of the windows installation that you want to add to the bootloader Based on my limited knowledge of GPT (and this alligns with what @Tripredacus said) there is no such thing as active partition for GPT disk Instead you may have to (or maybe this will be done automatically) make a FAT32 efi partition instead, but I don't know the details about that cause I don't have much experience with GPT disks, so look that up

SecondSystem disabled by default The official way - passive profile: Q&A by @win32: What if I want to only enable Second System on a per-application basis or use a different set of defaults? Create the registry value DefaultProfile in the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\LSC\SecondSystem, type REG_SZ (string). Set the value to the name of your preferred profile; set it to “Passive” if you do not want Second System to be applied to applications by default. Completely disabling any Second System's involvement in default program execution: If you don't want SecondSystem to be applied by default to all new programs you run and instead only work when you specifically use it through right-click menu do the following: 1. Download Sysinternels Autoruns 64-bit - https://live.sysinternals.com/Autoruns64.exe 32-bit - https://live.sysinternals.com/Autoruns.exe 2. Launch Autroruns and search for SecondSystem 3. Locate SecondSystem's entry in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon and uncheck it, (recheck to reenable) Note: If you launch a program with SecondSystem, all subsequent programs that you launch from that program will also have SecondSystem injected. Here we're disabling injecting SecondSystem into explorer.exe at logon so that all programs that you would launch through start menu, folders etc will also no longer have SecondSystem injected Making Shortcuts If SecondSystem is disabled by default you need to make special shortcuts for all programs that you want to run with SecondSystem. The syntax for those shortcuts should be as follows assuming default path for secondsystem.exe was selected during installation %localappdata%\SecondSystem\secondsystem.exe <ConfigName> <Path> Where <Path> is obviously path program exe you want to run and <ConfigName> can be any config defined at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\LSC\SecondSystem\Shell_Config\ The predefined configs are: DefaultConfig Win7Config Win81Config Shell Default Config is Windows 10 config and Shell only injects SecondSystem so that subsequent programs launched from a shell-launched program will also have SecondSystem injected, but it doesn't extend compatibility for the shell-launched program. The Shell config is used by default for explorer.exe and cmd.exe Examples: %localappdata%\SecondSystem\secondsystem.exe DefaultConfig "C:\ProgramData\Tor Browser\Browser\firefox.exe" %localappdata%\SecondSystem\secondsystem.exe Shell C:\Windows\explorer.exe

List of software that needs Second System disabled to run To disable Second System right click on the program's exe and select Disable Second System Feel free to report other programs. Don't work at all Windows Installer - there are issues running the service through Second System, which means that it is currently set to bypass Second System. Therefore, it is presently incapable of running modules that are incompatible with Windows 7, specifically the Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge Enterprise MSI installers. - Tested by @win32 Notepad++ - disable Second System on Windows 7 due to DirectWrite incompatibility - Tested by @win32 Microsoft Office 2007 Excel and PowerPoint - Tested by @TSNH on Windows Vista and Windows Vista Oct.2022 x64 ExK Internet Explorer 8 (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions) doesn’t launch if Second System is applied - Tested by @Vistaaa on Windows 7 x64 Visual Studio 2022 v17.6, which normally works on Windows 7, crashes when Second System is enabled (error message on startup in all compatibility modes: at least one component cannot be found, disabling Second System helps), Visual Studio Installer doesn't work if Second System is enabled, only transparent window appears - Tested by @Vistaaa on Windows 7 x64 older versions of Visual Studio Code tested on 1.81.1, in Windows 7 compatibility the window opens and closes immediately, nothing happens when Windows 10/11 compatibility mode is used) - Tested by @Vistaaa on Windows 7 x64 XAMPP Control Panel v.3.3.0 [Compiled Apr 6th, 2021] has some issues when Second System is enabled, Apache crashes on startup, disabling Second System helps - Tested by @Vistaaa on Windows 7 x64 r3dfox - Tested by @TSNH on Windows Vista and Windows Vista Oct.2022 x64 ExK VLC Media Player - "application was not properly initialized (0xc0000005)", this one is weird, maybe caused by some third party software interference - Tested by @TSNH on Windows Vista Oct.2022 x64 ExK PuTTY - terminal doesn't launch - Tested by @TSNH on Windows Vista Oct.2022 x64 ExK Need specific target OS compatibility older version of PowerShell 7.2.2 - Windows 7/8.1 compatibility required, otherwise "Failed to create CoreCLR, HRESULT: 0x80004005"- Tested by @TSNH on Windows Vista Oct.2022 x64 ExK Pale Moon - Windows 7/8.1 compatibility required, otherwise wrong size Windows 10 close button animations instead of Aero Glass ones - Tested by @TSNH on Windows Vista Oct.2022 x64 ExK Winmerge - Windows 7/8.1 compatibility required, otherwise ugly Windows 10 non-aero titlebar - Tested by @TSNH on Windows Vista Oct.2022 x64 ExK There are some issues Firefox - Window buttons also do not render properly by default; this can be corrected by selecting the titlebar to appear separately from the tab strip, or downloading and installing the Segoe Fluent Icons font here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/design/downloads/#fonts. - Tested by @win32

List of new software that Second System by @win32 allows to run. Second System is available for Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8.0, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows 11 (pre24H2) Second System can be found on win32's Patreon site | supporting his amazing work is possible there Access to the Second System is available only to paid subscribers of the Supermium support on patreon, but the Second System itself is DRM-free The list uses the following format: ProgramName version : Originally works on -> Second System unlocks it for Current version - At the time of testing the aforementioned version was the latest, so newer ones are likely to work too. Feel free to report other programs. Internet: Web Browsers: Firefox 143 Current version : Win10+ -> Vista+ (Including Tor Browser and forks) Chromium 142 Current version : Win10+ -> Vista+ (Including Google Chrome and other forks) Communication Platforms: Signal Current version : Win10+ -> Vista+ Other : Mozilla Thunderbird 140 Current version : Win10+ -> Vista+ QBitTorrent 5.1.2 Current version : Win10+ -> Vista+ (On Windows Vista, 7, 8.0 requires D3D11 Enhancement Pack) Windows Basic Tools: Windows 7 Paint (Win7/VistaExK)+ -> Vista+ Windows 10 1507 Snipping Tool (Win7/VistaExK)+ -> Vista+ (https://msfn.org/board/topic/182001-porting-snipping-tool-to-windows-7-from-windows-10/?do=findComment&comment=1210733) Multimedia: Foobar2000 2.51.1 Current version : Win7+ -> Vista+ (Except flac playback on Vista, use older version for that, new encoders still work fine with older foobar releases) WACUP 1.99 MP3Tag 3.31a Current version : (Win7/VistaExK)+ -> Vista+ KDEnlive 25.08.2 Current version : Win10+ -> Vista+ (On Windows Vista, 7, 8.0 requires D3D11 Enhancement Pack) Office tools: LibreOffice 25.2.5.2 : Win7+ -> Vista+ Administrative tools: Sysinternals Process Explorer 17.06 Current version : Win7+ -> Vista+ Sysinternels TCPView 4.19 Current version : (Win7/VistaExK)+ -> Vista+ Gpg4Win 4.4.1 with Kleopatra 3.30 Current version : Win7+ -> Vista+ Developer Tools: PowerShell 7.5.3 Current version : Win10+ -> Vista+ (note: uses like 5GB of RAM) Visual Studio Code 1.104.16282 Current version Win10+ -> Vista+ (including the open-source variant - VSCodium) Gaming: Steam October2025 Current version : Win10+ -> Vista+ (Doesn't work with new NVIDIA drivers on Vista, they tell the OS and Steamthat they support Vulkan, while in fact they don't. if you're facing other rendering issues try disabling GPU acceleration by going into the client settings -> interface) Stellaris Current version (needs --force-opengl in the shortcut path) BeamNG Drive Current version (dx11 recommended) Hollow Knight Silksong Current version : Win10+ -> Vista+ (With CFF explorer edit UnityPlayer.dll and replace all did12on11 function calls to d3d11.dll with D3D11CreateDevice function, launch the game, if you get black screen, ctrl-alt-delete and go back to the game and it should work) Geometry Dash Current version : Win8.1+ -> Vista+ (but on vista u need to put xinput1_3.dll into folder with game and rename it to xinput1_4.dll, also needs 2015-2022 vs redist) All the credits for the Second System go to @win32, not me. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners and are used here for identification purposes only. External Links: win32's Patreon site: https://www.patreon.com/win32

Forgot to quote you so you can get a notification as it's been a while Also commenting on the discussion from reddit The 7z contents from "this one" is the same as the originally posted one, I've binary compared them with winmerge And they are discussing nvme, but this pack contains also Generic_USB3x_6.2.9200.21180

Usually, the best universal USB3 drivers are pored 8.0 ones by @George King Someone links to that on reddit https://old.reddit.com/r/WindowsVista/comments/19e1bxn/finally_got_vista_to_run_on_nvme_look_on_my_works/ Right now the working link is the one under "this one" However on AMD systems that are 2015 or earlier it's better to use AMD drivers meant for Windows 7, they work for Vista too.

I have a 120Hz monitor and while games are indeed smoother than with 60FPS, On Windows 8, 7, and Vista, Aero animations still feel limited to 60FPS. Is it possible to make them actually utilize high refresh rate? or maybe make them 2x faster and increase their FPS that way?

My iso had a different file version, I think I got the right one by extracting files from updates of some windows vista update pack, but I don't remember which one, Searching this version also brings some results, you can try downloading this version directly from the internet if you don't have time for scavenging from unpacked updates (may be less safe tho) And it didn't work anyway on the laptop that I tried this patch on, your mileage may vary

The patch that you are referring to https://www.wincert.net/forum/topic/18176-vistaw2k8-x64-on-modern-hardware/ has to be applied to this exact version of acpi.sys 6.0.6002.24312 (vistasp2_ldr_escrow.180308-1636) make sure you have the right version But the necessary patch can be different for various hardware platforms

If you have K-Lite codec pack and mostly deafult settings, audio dithering for 16-bit output is enabled in the LAV audio decoder and it's settings. This process alters the sound slightly to reduce noise level So the possible reason why WAV can sound different than flac is because flac goes through the LAV audio and respects it's default settings with dithering (can be changed) and WAV by default doesn't go through the LAV audio and a standard builtin Windows decoder is used instead because wav is a Windows-native format and therefore the dithering setting is not being applied, so the output sounds different despite inputs being the same and lossless.

Update: Larian Studios has dropped a new update to BG3! I've just updated this guide with a new workaround regarding the Win7-incompatible PlayFAB component. According to the developers it's the last main development update so there is a big chance that BG3 will be kept compatible with Windows 7 for years to come

If so an FTP server on a local network will probably be the easiest transfer method. As a server you can use an old phone or ISS on a Windows virtual machine (even NT4 server would work)

Does it show up at all in My Computer when you connect it and allow photo transfer on the phone's screen or this error pops up when you initiate the transfer? I was able to test on an older iPhone (not 15pro) but updated to IOS 18 and Windows Vista and photo transfer worked there without any iTunes.

As a bonus here are Vista-compatible .reg files that add PowerShell 7 to the context menus To use them copy, save a .reg and apply Open PowerShell here: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell\openpwsh] "MUIVerb"="&Open PowerShell" "Icon"="C:\\Program Files\\PowerShell\\7\\pwsh.exe" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell\openpwsh\command] @="cmd.exe /k for /l %%i in (0,0,1) do cls & pwsh.exe -NoExit -RemoveWorkingDirectoryTrailingCharacter -WorkingDirectory \"%V!\" -Command \"$host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle = 'PowerShell 7 (x64)'\" " Open a folder in PowerShell: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\PowerShell7x64] "MUIVerb"="&Open in PowerShell" "Icon"="C:\\Program Files\\PowerShell\\7\\pwsh.exe" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\PowerShell7x64\command] @="cmd.exe /k for /l %%i in (0,0,1) do cls & pwsh.exe -NoExit -RemoveWorkingDirectoryTrailingCharacter -WorkingDirectory \"%V!\" -Command \"$host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle = 'PowerShell 7 (x64)'\" " Run .ps1 file in PowerShell: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Microsoft.PowerShellScript.1\Shell\PowerShell7x64] "Icon"="C:\\Program Files\\PowerShell\\7\\pwsh.exe" "MUIVerb"="Run with PowerShell 7" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Microsoft.PowerShellScript.1\Shell\PowerShell7x64\Command] @="cmd /k for /l %%i in (0,0,1) do cls & pwsh.exe -Command \"$host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle = 'PowerShell 7 (x64)'; if((Get-ExecutionPolicy ) -ne 'AllSigned') { Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope Process Bypass }; & '%1'\" " As you can see they try to retry the PowerShell launch if it fails to overcome 7.2.2's bug, and are also in a bit different format than those supplied with PowerShell installer because those didn't work with Vista. I still haven't figured out how to make run as administrator versions EDIT: Changed command logic so that the should now work for much longer directory path strings.

PowerShell 7 on Windows Vista Extended Kernel done properly So here's how to install 64-bit PowerShell 7 on Windows Vista with Extended Kernel. You MUST use EXACLY version 7.2.2. If you want to know why is that, go to the section why 7.2.2?, but for now here's a Quick step-by-step guide: 1. Install Windows Vista Extended Kernel October 2022 x64 version if you haven't already (only x64 files are needed, less stable x86 ones not required) https://msfn.org/board/topic/183046-guide-vista-extended-kernel-installation/ 2. Download zipped version of PowerShell 7.2.2 (PowerShell-7.2.2-win-x64.zip) from GitHub https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases/tag/v7.2.2 3. Extract it somewhere, from now on this somewhere is assumed to be "C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7\" so that the path to the main executable is "C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7\pwsh.exe" 4. Add this to your osver.ini in C:\Windows (if it's not there create it) [C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7\pwsh.exe] Enabled=1 MinorVersion=1 5. Add "C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7" without quotes to your system Path. To do that go to ControlPanel -> System and Maintenance -> System -> System Properties -> Advanced (it's a tab) -> Environmental Variables. Look for the Path variable and add the aforementioned path to other things after a semicolon ( ; ), thats how things are separated there. 6. Download and unzip this special shortcut https://forum.legacydev.org/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=231 and put it in "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Accessories\Windows PowerShell" so that it appears in the start menu next to the old-school WindowsPowerShell. You can also put it in "%appdata%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch" to add it to quick launch. The 2 things that are special about the shortcut I've made are: It launches cmd to launch PowerShell, which is a workaround to a problem with 7.2.2 more in why 7.2.2? It behaves like a WindowsPowerShell window, so it has a range select feature and the iconic PowerShell blue color. 7. Enjoy Why 7.2.2? So you could just install 7.2.17, 7.2.24 or any other newer 7.2.x version, and it would work fine... mostly But sometimes those versions hang on startup and never launch staying in a non-functional state which even takes a few seconds when you decide close it. On some machines like 9/10 launch tries are successful on some almost none. There are even reports of this occurring on Windows 10: https://old.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/v6arrr/powershell_72x_almost_always_hangs_when_launched/?rdt=40615 https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/issues/17558 But I've managed to reproduce this issue only on Windows Vista machines and multiple ones. 7.2.3 and newer as well as newer 7.1.x like 7.1.7 are affected by this issue on Vista 7.2.1 and older as well as older 7.1 and 7.0 on the other hand just fail to launch at all showing a Failed to initialize properly ... smth error. So if it wasn't for 7.2.2 you would have to go back to PowerShell 6 to get a working version But 7.2.2 has it's own issue where it sometimes immediately closes after launching an exe. Fortunately it doesn't do this when launched from another command line tool, that's why it was necessary to make a shortcut that launches cmd first and pwsh next

Is Nvidia container service running? Unfortunately I had to enable it, otherwise the settings would reset (Windows 8.0 here)

What are the improvements in this version vs Windows 7 paint?

iOS is a heavily locked platform, in US it only allows app installation through the ofiicial AppStrore, while Android users can probably just sideload an apk and use a VPN to access Tiktok

iPhone users will finally feel the need for sideloading.

Where did you find this info? Compressing audio in a lossless way should be theoretically possible and that's exactly what FLAC is supposed to accomplish. It would have no reason to exist otherwise.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this autorun thing makes me think that you are launching the setup from another running Windows installation. So try booting from the setup disc instead.