It's my only controller and i've been setting up games on my vista machine so i looked it up and got a whole load of results for xbox one drivers and how to use them with vista but nothing on series x/s controllers. i cant even find modern drivers for it, only that theyre installed with the xbox apps and all that built in win10/11 stuff. Is there really no way to do it or am i not looking hard enough? (the point of this question is really "should i just get an older controller/controller with older drivers?")

Im a bit late but are they Wired or Wireless controllers? Windows Vista natively supports Xbox controllers that use X-Input mode like the Xbox 360 ones, however i don't know much about Xbox Series S/X ones, if they are wired you should connect them, if they work, great, if they don't, there is probably no way to make them work. If they are wireless and they use bluetooth, make sure you have a bluetooth card and that you are able to pair them. if they use some sort of receiver (like the Xbox 360 wireless ones) get one and connect the receiver, maybe it works. Otherwise you can get generic controllers from brands like Logitech, personally i used a modern Logitech and Trust controller and both worked in both Xinput and Dinput modes, but Xinput performed better.