News Microsoft launches Vista compatibility tool

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/07/09/microsoft-launches-vista-compatibility-tool/1

Microsoft launched a compatibility database for Windows Vista yesterday revealing that 18 months after launch users are still struggling with the new OS.

 

ive only found one piece of software that didnt work in vista that i use, and i cant even remember what it was, but hardware wise my laptop did orginally come with vista so, it would have been shocking if something didnt work

 

That article is quite biased ... Software that doesn't work is nothing to do with MS -- it's the software's designers that are at fault. Hardware that does not work is nearly ALWAYS due to bad drivers, again, NOT an MS issue but the developers for that hardware. I for one like the MS signing of drivers as it means that they have had extensive tests done to them and they wont cause system instability -- the main cause for most XP crashes.

 

At least half my collection of games won't work on Vista and that annoys me. Not even old games - Deus Ex 2, Chronicles of Riddick, Fahrenheit, No One Lives Forever (1 and 2) - none work on Vista.

 

it was plain sailing... only a few classic games doesn't work with Vista 64bit, but those can be missed as it's always the time to move on.

the old devices that are not compatible is manufacture's fault, if anyone ever find such manufacture, i urge you to never buy their software again. it is simply a sign of irrisponsible driver support, thus a sign of bad manufacture.

 

I think, more importantly, Red Alert 2 still doesn't work on Vista!

 

Wrong, i play RA2 on both my Vista machine and XP machine.

Sam

 

Gareth, yes, biased. Throwing in the odd "while it's not TOTALLY MS' fault..." once in an otherwise blistering article can, in fact, be considered biased. The only issue I've had with Vista is that C&C3 doesn't run on Vista x64. Well, that and that some of my HP peripherals don't work in Vista, but then that's HP's fault. HP is totally crap at writing drivers even for XP. Or 98. Or 95. Or anything. HP is the one that needs to get blasted, not MS.

 

Still got an issue with the Asus P5K-E wifi driver where I get blue screen of death happening everytime I set a static IP in 64bit Vista

 

Indeed, RA2 will run on Vista, however multiplayer will not, as RA2 uses the IPX network protocol, which has been removed from windows since xp64bit.
I genrally get round this by using an xp virtual machine, as saves having to reboot pc.

Only other issue with Vista I experience is with the sound card driver for the Soundmax onbard sound for my mobo (Asus P5N32-E SLI) which is a bit flakely to say the lest, but only for 64bit, 32bit driver works very well.
Asus/Soundmax have been very slack on the drivers for this.

Thankfully I managed to get a cheap Creative X-FI card from a friend at work for just £10, which seems to have improved things.

 

what virtual machine software do you use?

VMware only have a 6MB crappy video card emulation, im not sure if it can run any game at all. (haven't tryed)

 

I use the free Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 which emulates a 8mb S3 Trio 32/64.
Once you have installed the guest OS, be sure to install the VirtualPC addtions pack (included in the base install).

I find it plays RA2 flawlessly on my system, infact im often the one who hosts the multiplayer games (up to 8players, no lag).
Ive not tried it with many other old games.

 

Long live XP

 

cool, 8mb S3 Trio 32/64...... does it have 3d acceleration? pixel shader? (worth a try)

 

I know it's not software, but the only thing that has never worked for me on Vista, is X3.

That really messed up my system. It stopped it booting for god sakes...

 

Code:

Video
•	Emulates the S3 Trio 32/64 PCI Super VGA (SVGA) card.
•	Implements 8 MB of emulated video random access memory (VRAM) for a maximum screen resolution setting of 1600 x 1200.
•	Fully implements S3 Trio 32/64 graphic acceleration features and is compatible with S3 Trio 32/64 drivers.
•	Supports 1600 x 1024 and 800 x 512 16:9 aspect ratio modes.
•	Backwards-compatible with VGA, monochrome display adapter (MDA), color/graphics adapter (CGA), and enhanced graphics adapter (EGA) video modes.
•	Compliant with VESA 2.0.
Note For a virtual machine to correctly recognize 8 MB of video RAM, the Virtual PC Additions must be installed on the virtual machine.

Is all I could find.

 

My PC Monitor is Vista Compatible... It has a big sticker saying so.

 

The only annoyance I had with Vista is that I have to run every game in dx9 mode to get a better performance, so I have to modify the shortcut for every single freakin' game...

 

Software wise, i have only had a problem with TrueSpace 3.2 not running, which was probably meant for Windows 98 (though it runs fine on XP, which i resorted to in this case). With hardware, I have had basically no problems, though most of my hardware is fairly recent (oldest piece i have is the SB Audigy 2). only problem i've really had is with my SATA controller driver preventing me from going up to SP1 (a bit off-topic, but if anyone else reading this has an ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe board and have gotten past this, pls pm me ;-)). However, this comes down to ASUS and the board now basically being "too old" to release updates for. I think anything released since January 2006 should surely be well supported with drivers under Vista, and anything older that is still widely in use the manufacturers need to be hounded to get their arse in gear