Windows Vista Skylake update

[Arutz Tele]

Hi guys, it's 2020 and I wanna talk to you about something.

A few months back I decided to experiment installing Windows Vista on my Skylake, Dell Inspiron 5559 laptop. The OS works, but it would not start up properly at some times. It would also not shutdown properly. What I managed to get working was sound, WiFi (via DW1560 card upgrade), and a higher screen resolution. But another key problem here is that the Display Driver would not work.

I took the Windows 7 setup file for the Intel HD Graphics 530 and modified it to make it work with Windows Vista. It did install properly with warnings, but even with Disable Driver Signature Enforcement the drivers wouldn't load, and it would be much worse.

If anyone has solutions on how to make Vista work better on Skylake and Kaby Lake and other processors, let me know

[win32]

You should look at the .sys files in the driver package in Dependency Walker. There are probably a few missing API functions that prevent the usage of the Skylake graphics. The only way I can think of dealing with the missing API imports is to replace them with Vista-compatible ones using CFF Explorer but that has a 0.3% chance of success. Someone with better knowledge of x86 assembly would probably get further, but I still have my doubts. Too bad you can't install discrete graphics.

You should be able to deal with the startup failures by installing Vista on older hardware then transferring the storage medium (or possibly in a VM then transferring to real hardware) to the newer machine.

Edited March 20, 2020 by win32

[Arutz Tele]

On 3/20/2020 at 3:07 PM, win32 said:

You should look at the .sys files in the driver package in Dependency Walker. There are probably a few missing API functions that prevent the usage of the Skylake graphics. The only way I can think of dealing with the missing API imports is to replace them with Vista-compatible ones using CFF Explorer but that has a 0.3% chance of success. Someone with better knowledge of x86 assembly would probably get further, but I still have my doubts. Too bad you can't install discrete graphics.

I think that is true, because the API functions weren't introduced until at least Windows 7+. I'm not sure if there are any Windows Vista updates that add these compatibility layers.

On 3/20/2020 at 3:07 PM, win32 said:

You should be able to deal with the startup failures by installing Vista on older hardware then transferring the storage medium (or possibly in a VM then transferring to real hardware) to the newer machine.

I'm doing this on a triple-boot configuration (with Windows 7/POSReady and macOS), so if I'm installing on a VM, how could I clone it with Ghost or some other tool without destroying my Windows or macOS?

[win32]

1 hour ago, Arutz Tele said:

I think that is true, because the API functions weren't introduced until at least Windows 7+. I'm not sure if there are any Windows Vista updates that add these compatibility layers.

There is the Platform Update and Platform Update Supplement. But I think the newest Intel graphics known to work in Vista is Haswell, even with all updates. Someone made a wrapper to get a newer AMD GPU working but the result was unusable so my hopes are non-existent for Skylake graphics. The level of expertise in the Vista community just isn't there.

I was thinking of this method for transferring the OS from VM to bare metal, since it has been used to get Windows 2000 on an i7-8700K machine: https://superuser.com/questions/241269/exporting-a-virtualbox-vdi-to-a-harddrive-to-boot-it-natively 

Provided your disk imaging software (I don't have much experience with those, unfortunately) allows you to copy the image to a specific partition, the other OSes in different partitions should stay intact, but the boot sector will likely be overwritten. But you should be able to do bcdboot X:\Windows (X being your W7 partition's drive letter) to restore win7 to the boot menu. Not sure about mac OS though.

[Arutz Tele]

7 minutes ago, win32 said:

There is the Platform Update and Platform Update Supplement.

So I see here. Because when I installed it before deleting the partition when I gave up, I didn't have the Platform Updates (I had SP2 though), but I would see a little chance of it getting fixed, even installing the Platform Update.

8 minutes ago, win32 said:

But you should be able to do bcdboot X:\Windows (X being your W7 partition's drive letter) to restore win7 to the boot menu. Not sure about mac OS though.

My DELL laptop is newer and uses UEFI, and for macOS, we all heard of Clover, it is a tool that bypasses Apple restrictions and allows macOS to boot on non-Apple hardware. It's easy to restore both, actually in that case.

 

About Platform Update, I might reload Windows Vista later on and see if it's going to have a slim chance to work.

[win32]

1 hour ago, Arutz Tele said:

My DELL laptop is newer and uses UEFI, and for macOS, we all heard of Clover, it is a tool that bypasses Apple restrictions and allows macOS to boot on non-Apple hardware. It's easy to restore both, actually in that case.

UEFI, that changes everything. I was thinking MBR, but in that case, all the EFI bootloaders should stay intact even if newer ones are added. I know that when I installed Debian on my Kaby Lake laptop, the old Windows 10 boot loader remained present and usable, and both grub and Windows Boot Manager were listed in the UEFI firmware's boot options. So you wouldn't need to restore anything, in all likelihood.

Edited March 23, 2020 by win32

[Arutz Tele]

So I was installing Windows Vista on my Skylake DELL laptop again, and I just got the "Windows Setup could not configure Windows to run on this hardware" message.

[Arutz Tele]

7 hours ago, Arutz Tele said:

You should be able to deal with the startup failures by installing Vista on older hardware then transferring the storage medium (or possibly in a VM then transferring to real hardware) to the newer machine.

So I have decided to use a old ThinkPad image I did from a year back and restored it to my partition via Clonezilla, however I still get the service errors, and Logon failures and startup failures as well. I think it didn't help.

[Arutz Tele]

and this is what I got on some boots while trying to open Windows Security:

[win32]

I just noticed that the success story I was describing earlier (Haswell) was with a 32-bit version of Vista. And the other report of working Vista on new Intel platforms (Coffee Lake) is also with the x86 version. So I think you will have to use the x86 version to avoid the service failure issue.

Unfortunately 32bit UEFI wasn't a thing until Windows 8 though.

[Arutz Tele]

Looks like I'll have to reinstall with x86 Vista media, but I'm afraid about GPT. It looks like I'll have to wipe my entire hard drive for MBR support...

[burd]

 

 

56 minutes ago, Arutz Tele said:

and this is what I got on some boots while trying to open Windows Security:

this happens frequently to me on skylake , need to restart to fix in my case

[Arutz Tele]

5 minutes ago, burd said:

 

 

this happens frequently to me on skylake , need to restart to fix in my case

That is the issue, and I don't know if there will be a fix other than to use the x86 version of Vista.

And what if you wanna restart or shutdown the computer? Well, if you don't get Windows Security, you have to force shut it off manually

Edited March 24, 2020 by Arutz Tele

[burd]

1 hour ago, Arutz Tele said:

That is the issue, and I don't know if there will be a fix other than to use the x86 version of Vista.

And what if you wanna restart or shutdown the computer? Well, if you don't get Windows Security, you have to force shut it off manually

yeah, nothing can be done!

[Arutz Tele]

And that's kinda awkward because I find it ironic how would Windows Vista x64 run with many failures on Skylake, while I ran Windows 7 RTM (before installing SP1) and it loaded without any issues what so ever.

I wonder what about Windows XP x64? I think XP x64 could run natively without issues, but requires some more work. I might look into that.