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I hope it's okay to post about (yet another) compatibility issue with Vista! Some of you may know already, but the latest version of Adobe Reader (Acrobat DC) only supports Windows 7 and later. However, I extracted the installer and got an MSI out of it. I edited the MSI with Orca and removed the NT 6.1 restriction, and it installed without errors. However, getting it to run is a different story. Judging by the error message attached, it appears that there's a missing call in USER32.dll called GetTouchInputInfo. I don't know if it can be stubbed or not, and I lack the necessary skills to do it myself. Would anyone here be interested in stubbing this call (or even finding out if it can be done)? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Hello, I have a desktop that has Windows 7 and Windows XP installed on separate hard drives. Hard drive 1 contains Windows 7, and that's what the computer boots each time. Hard drive 2 has XP, but the only way I'm able to boot into XP is to disable hard drive 1 in the BIOS. I'd like to be able to add XP into Windows 7's boot menu so I can select which OS to boot when the computer starts up. I tried running these commands (from Windows 7): bcdedit /create {ntldr} /d "Windows XP"bcdedit /set {ntldr} device partition=F: path \ntldrbcdedit /displayorder {ntldr} /addlastI rebooted, but whenever I tried selecting "Windows XP" from the boot menu, the computer just restarts. How do I configure this correctly? I am aware of third-party tools like EasyBCD, but I'm looking for a way to do this using bcdedit on the command-line. Another thing to note is that XP labels its partition (hard drive 2) as C:, but Windows 7 labels hard drive 2 as F: (which is why I specified partition=F). Do I have to do anything extra to make sure that when XP boots, it correctly identifies its own partition as C: and not F:?

Hey everyone. I am wanting to dualboot Windows Vista Ultimate x64 with Windows XP x64 (or possibly Windows Server 2003), with Windows Vista already installed first. I was wondering if there was anyway to do this without corrupting Windows VIsta's bootloader, as I've heard that installing XP alongside Vista (with Vista installed first) will result in Vista's bootloader being corrupted. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Why Windows Vista isn't bad Windows Vista: it's the OS everyone loves to hate. Still today, several years later, I see it being criticized for having high system requirements and being a memory hog. But is it really that bad? I think not. In this article I am going to explain why I believe Windows Vista deserves more respect and really isn't bad, and hopefully convince some of you XP and Windows 7 fans that Vista is a very viable OS, especially by today's standards. So let's begin. Windows Vista, when released, introduced a completely different and totally new kernel and driver model than that of its predecessor, Windows XP. Introducing a new kernel caused compatibility issues with legacy applications, and an entire new driver model caused a number of driver compatibility problems. I'll admit, Windows Vista truly wasn't ready when it was released in its RTM version, as it still caused heavy disk I/O which drastically decreased the life of hard drives and degraded performance. There were also issues with OEMs, that hadn't yet released drivers for Vista or released drivers that didn't work well with the new driver model, and OEMs forced Vista onto hardware that barely met the system requirements for Windows Vista. They also stuffed it full of OEM bloatware which caused it to be even slower for users. However, in this article I'm going to explain how those problems were fixed and are now non-existent in Windows Vista. The Rise of Vista: Service Pack 1 released In 2008 with the release of Vista SP1, tons of issues were resolved, and speed was greatly improved. Some improvements made in Service Pack 1 were: Faster copy times, heavy disk activity was toned down dramatically, and tons of apps and drivers had finally caught up with Vista, but there were still some issues. Vista, even with SP1, was still lackluster and needed some work, to hopefully get people off Windows XP for good. There was still the slow boot up and shut down time, as well as a few instability issues. But soon, Microsoft was going to fix that in its next Service Pack for Windows Vista. Vista at its peak: Service Pack 2 released With the release of Service Pack 2 in April 2009, Vista was finally what I would call ready, and Microsoft had managed to finally advance the OS far ahead of Windows XP. Improvements in Service Pack 2 were: even faster file copy times, boot up time improved dramatically, stability greatly improved, memory (RAM) usage was toned down, UAC was refined to be less annoying (while keeping the OS secure), and support for newer types of hardware was added, including support for blue-ray discs. At this stage, Windows Vista was, in my opinion, a worthy successor to Windows XP, and was almost perfect. However, the hate still raged on in most people's minds. Why people still hate Windows Vista Vista is still hated by the majority today, and I believe I know why. Early adopters that tried Vista didn't give it a second chance. They tried it once, either hated it or loved it, and never looked back at it again. So they just hopped back to the trusty old Windows XP and waited for the next version of Windows to arrive, that being Windows 7. Despite service packs improving the OS, people still didn't give Vista another chance, and forever concluded in their minds that it was a failure. I've also had people tell me that they hate Vista because they "heard bad things about it". And a lot of people just jumped on the Vista hating bandwagon without even trying it, which in my opinion, isn't a smart thing to do. Why Windows Vista deserves more respect Windows Vista introduced many new technologies that are critical to Windows 7's existence. Some people may not realize this, but Windows Vista was critical to Windows 7's success. Had Windows 7 in its form today been released instead of Vista, Windows 7 would've received criticism for the same reasons as Windows Vista. It also had high system requirements (identical to Windows Vista's in fact) compared with XP, and it retained a similar kernel (only slightly refined from Vista) and an almost identical driver model introduced by Windows Vista, which makes it a complete departure from Windows XP as well. Compatibility issues would've existed, and Windows 7 would've been installed on underpowered hardware, just as Vista was, and users would've complained about slowness, and jumped back to XP, just as they did with Vista; which is why I believe Vista deserves more respect. Why Windows Vista is much better than Windows XP Some people might have trouble swallowing this, but Windows Vista truly is a large step up from Windows XP, in many ways. One large criticism of Windows XP was security, and despite Microsoft improving the security by releasing Service Pack 2 for XP in 2004, Vista really abolished that problem at a much higher level. With a stronger Windows Firewall and User Account Control that was refined over time to be less annoying with updates, Windows Vista is much more secure than Windows XP. Windows Vista is also better optimized for modern hardware, and takes better advantage of multi-core processors than Windows XP, and has a full-fledged 64 bit version. XP had a 64 bit version, but it was based on its server counterpart, Windows Server 2003, which caused compatibility issues and was not widely adopted. Windows Vista also has more secure networking, and with Service Pack 1, tests showed Windows Vista outperformed Windows XP in the file copying area, just as Microsoft had claimed to improve with the update. Windows Vista also introduced DirectX 10, which delivered much richer gaming graphics and better performance than DirectX 9.0c which was the last version available for Windows XP. Windows Vista also introduced support for USB 3.0, which was much faster and more efficient than USB 2.0 that was available on Windows XP. Although, most USB 3.0 devices will still work—in a technical sense—with Windows XP because they’re backward-compatible. However, they will fall back to USB 2.0 compatibility and transfer data at about one-tenth of the potential speed of USB 3.0. Also, Windows Vista introduced a much faster, more efficient, and more convenient search. Open any explorer window or open the start menu in Vista, and there's most likely search present there. In Windows XP, all you have out of the box is the classic search from previous versions of Windows. And although it works, it's still not as convenient or as efficient as it is in Windows Vista, because you only have it all in one place, rather than throughout the system like in Windows Vista. Although it really wasn't necessary, Windows Vista introduced a very elegant desktop composition engine known as Windows Aero, which looked, to me anyways, much more appealing than the Luna interface that was in Windows XP. And it was refined to be less resource intensive with Service Pack 2. Windows Vista: a viable choice for many, even today Windows Vista was truly ahead of its time, and by today's standards, it still pretty much meets everything most people would want from an operating system. It's very similar to Windows 7. It works well on modern hardware, as it's optimized for multi-core processors, and works with most of the latest third party software. And it also supports 64 bit computing very well, just as well as Windows 7 in fact. And much better than Windows XP did. I'm not saying we should all just switch to Windows Vista, but if you're still using Windows XP, upgrading to Vista with Service Pack 2 wouldn't at all be a bad idea if your hardware can handle it. Conclusion Well I'll leave you with this, and I hope I helped some of you realize why Windows Vista was really a misunderstood operating system. Today, Windows Vista is much better than it was in its infancy, and is no longer "crap" like people have claimed that it is. As long as you run it on compatible hardware and keep it up to date, it will run just fine. In fact, I use Vista (or server 2008 as a workstation rather, the same as vista pretty much) as my main OS, and it runs just fine. And I don't understand that if someone that likes Windows 7 tried Vista today with Service Pack 2 installed on modern hardware, how they could still hate it- but that's just my take on this. If you know why please explain. Thanks very much for reading! -2008WindowsVista

I have a problem here. When I try to run the 64-bit version of a application such as Stella 4.0 that was built with the 64-bit version of Visual Studio 2013, the application crashes. The problem details are as follows: Other applications built using the 64-bit version of Visual Studio 2013 such as Media Player Classic do work under Vista x64. Is there a way to fix or debug this issue? I know that this issue might have been resolved under Windows 7 SP1, but what about Windows Vista SP2 users?

Hey there! :wave: Incase you haven't already noticed, I won the unused retail copy of Windows Vista Ultimate DVD as a Christmas present and now I'm planning to abandon Windows 2000 and migrate to the ASUS M5A97 R2.0 motherboard soon. Once the new computer has been built, it will have 8 GB of DDR3 RAM and can max out at 32 GB. However, looking at the contents of the 32-bit and 64-bit DVDs, I found that the date stamp on the files is 2006-11-02 12:00:00, meaning that it is the original release of Windows Vista (with no service packs installed). If I want to install Windows Vista on the ASUS M5A97 R2.0 motherboard, how can I do it with 8 GB of memory installed? Would I have to: 1. Downgrade the RAM to 2 GB and install Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit? 2. Slipstream Windows Vista Ultimate SP2 64-bit? I looked on this website regarding the instructions on slipstreaming Vista SP2 on a new computer, you can view it here: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/230249-sliptream-vista-sp2.html However, I'm a bit confused about all of this... I have concerns that I will most likely get hit with a STOP 0x0A error when attempting to install Windows Vista with more than 3 GB of memory. Does anyone have any ideas how to get around this? If so, please post your thoughts. I would like to hear it.

You know, Windows 2000 has been my favourite OS for nearly the last four years; however, I've been starting to experience some issues with the OS even though it's working "as-is". And now, I can't run *some* of the software that is designed to work on at least a Core 2 Duo processor or better and I found that I've been plagued with some of the compatibility issues over software designed to only work on Windows XP or Vista. With that said, I'm considering moving back to Windows Vista for a while even though the OS is no longer sold and out of Mainstream Support. I found full retail versions (not the OEM or upgrade versions) of Windows Vista Ultimate for under $100 on eBay and Amazon. But this is where I will need your help as I will end up with a semi-new custom build computer. Can you find me a white coloured full tower case and a good motherboard that is still Windows Vista capable, supports at least one IDE connector (if necessary) and supports up to either 16 GB or as much as 32 GB of memory and a graphics card that works on Windows Vista? I will eventually want to migrate my PCI network card and my PCI PCMCIA card over to the newer motherboard as well as long as it still has PCI support. What I find unfortunate is that newer motherboards and graphics cards have even dropped Windows XP and Vista support, I will still have some time left before all support for Vista ends. The biggest problem is budget and funding issues. If I find that I don't have that kind of money to migrate back to Vista, I may have to scrap this idea. Please post your thoughts of which motherboard is good enough to run Vista on and let me know before the consideration becomes a plan.