I have seen many post on various tech sites (usually on the Windows XP end of sales articles) that allege that Windows Vista is 'incompatible' with hardware/software.

Ive been running Vista since shortly after RTM and havent seen anything id classify as an 'incompatibility' in a long time. which left me wondering, what software is actually incompatible with Vista?

Ok first some ground rules:

1. If you want to list an incompatibility, you must have been the person who witnessed it. (no friend of a friend told me program X doesn't work)
2. It must have worked with XP.
3. Must have been tested with the most recent version of the software.
4. If the Hardware/Software was not 'on the shelf' at the time Vista RTMed, then Im not counting it (the only exception is if its a Microsoft Hardware/Software Product -Example: Win2k cant share files with Vista -of course it can thats just an example)
   Use some common sense. -if you are attempting to connect Vista via ICS to share a HP deskjet 540c printer via a 50 foot adhoc wireless connection to a 10 year old win2k machine, Vista isnt the weak link there.

__Incompatible:__

1. mmm+ by hace
2. Nero 6 - last version released 03-21-2007 (2 months after Vista Launch) Vista compatibility was NOT advertised as a feature but according to the incompatibility ground rules i set initially, im adding to to the list

__Minor issues, or specific features not working:__

1. Cisco VPN Client: Smartcard support is broken
2. Some VNC versions (i.e. TightVNC): won't run in service mode Ultra VNC reported as working with no issues.

__Works, but with problems:__

1. HDTach - only in compatibility mode -GrofLuigi pointed out that compatibility mode is not ideal for a benchmarking program
2. modifyPE - only in compatibility mode

The only incompatibility that I have witnessed is Cisco VPN with smartcard authentication. Cisco still hasn't put out a compatible VPN client that will work with smartcards. Every release they have lists that as a problem in the release notes. They obviously know it's a problem, but haven't done anything about it. So, I can't blame this on Vista, but it is an issue on Vista because it works just fine on XP.

Other than that, I don't really understand what the haters are bitching about. I bought a laptop like a week after vista went RTM and have been running the x64 version ever since. It runs great.

mmm+ by hace really f's Vista up.

Well, considering the menu system in Vista is different than previous OSes, and that mmm+ is XP only, not surprising .

Actually I got it to work on 2000 (With a little bit of work) and server 2003.

Also not surprising.

I don't find Vista to have many compatibility issues & have been testing it for quite some time. I just don't think its an easy OS to upgrade to atm. There's still many driver issues, not so many software problems. It will be some time yet afore it becomes my daily drive here I'm afraid.

Looks like this is gonna be a very short list as I expected

Where's the Vista bashers and their constant FUD now?

I think its a very much take or leave it OS no real great gains for me with this soft.

So far, off the top of my head, I've encountered no less than three completely incompatible pieces of day-to-day software that I've used on XP:

- Nero 6. I will not use anything after Nero 6 because it's utter bullcrap. But Nero 6 just locks up when it tries to access the burner, although you can get it back by waiting a while for the access to time out and hammer "cancel" repeatedly.
- TightVNC. It won't operate in service mode because of the way Vista restructured the service/user interface interactions; it can no longer access the user-mode desktop and therefore can only be used in "application" mode.
- HDTach. It plain refuses to start, probably because it relies on a driver that's not Vista compatible.

Fud?

edit: I have UAC disabled and removed, so everything is already running with administrator privileges anyway.

ok first off,

secondly, every version after Nero 3 is crap.



ok ill add it to the top post.



will run in compatibility mode.
Click to view attachment
however i will add it to the list in a separate category.

Coupla points to counter:

First, people use old versions for a reason - they work, and they do their job better than the new version most of the time. How come Nero 6 suddenly stopped working with Vista, but it would work with everything else? I think it should be added, because there are a lot of people that use Nero 6 because there's nothing better...

Second, I haven't touched "compatibility mode" in, well, ever... it's pretty much never fixed anything until Vista came along and broke everything. So I don't think that just because it runs in "compatibility mode" that it's just automatically considered "compatible". You had to "hack" it to get it to work... otherwise, no, it just doesn't work. =P

edit: Ah, an edit. That fixes #2.

edit edit: According to TightVNC's site, that incompatibility applies to any variation of VNC (RealVNC, etc), not just TightVNC. Source: http://www.tightvnc.com/faq.html#vista

Pfffft! Everybody knows v2 is where it's at! 3 was bloated! And there's no new features added since then, and if there ever were, well, uh... I wouldn't use them anyways!


I disagree. Most new versions are better (just not Win ME I guess). Nero included -- to quote one of my posts from like an hour ago, some newer features: "DVD DL support, improved UDF support, LightScribe, support for BluRay (the burners are becoming cheaper already -- I've seen the LG GGW-H20L for $270 before), etc". And that's just for the burning data discs part. I don't care for the other stuff either, but there are some people who just love it, and use it almost everyday, I think they'd disagree with your "utter bullcrap" assessment.


And I have. A lot. On DOS, we had to use SetVer for various apps. On WFW fancy pif files were often required. Same story for Windows 95. Win2k and XP needed lots of compat mode changes for older apps back then too (mainly dos and win9x ones), sometimes faking windows version wasn't enough, you even had to force video to 640x480/256 colours, and some other apps just have to be ran under dosbox even. I had to resort to them tricks a lot when I tried win 2003 as a desktop as well.

With Vista, HDTach 3 is the only app I had to do this for so far. And not because the features are broken or anything, but because it checks for the version of windows and plain out refuses to run on Vista or Win 2008, and the author has been too lazy to update it in over a year, even though it's well known to work just fine. It's DESIGNED not to run so having to use compatibility is hardly surprising there. You HAVE to fool the initial GetVersionExA check (MUST be NT 5.x) -- a 1 byte patch works fine. I'll post a screenshot (and a patch, if they want), if the mods give me the go ahead (not illegal: it does NOT bypass any protection code/licensing/serial checks or such, it's merely for interoperability/to circumvent restrictions for use, which is deemed as acceptable by US Judges)

As for TightVNC, I dunno. UltraVNC is working 100% fine here (server running as a service and all)

So far, it looks like this to me:

Actually not working:
1. mmm+ by hace

Minor issues, or specific features not working:
1. Cisco VPN Client: Smartcard support is broken
2. Some VNC versions (i.e. TightVNC): won't run in service mode

Works only in compatibility mode:
1. HDTach 3 (designed not to run, patching also works)

Still a very short list.

I've gotten Nero 6 (portable version) to work in Vista in compatibility mode. And yes, newer versions support HD DVD burning. So unless you plan to live in the past, you can find satisfaction with standard DVD's.

I don't even burn DVDs with Nero. I burn audio and data CDs with Nero and that's pretty much it. There is no way in hell I'm paying 30 bucks for a single freaking HD disc... o_O

That pretty much makes you a minority. I mainly burn data DVDs myself. Blank CDs are no cheaper then DVDs anymore anyways.


Actually, they're already down to ~$15 (Verbatims can be had for $13 by the unit, including shipping). Give it a couple years and they'll likely be about 5$, which is not bad considering the capacity: about 6 or so single layer DVDs, which is already worth a couple bucks, or about 3 or so of the pricier double layer DVDs. Drives by then will likely be under 100$ too. I'm definitely looking forward to it.

It doesn't make Nero any less compatible anyways. Actually, I'd like to see if a nero 3 or 4 versions out of date (at the time) would have ran on XP when it came out too (that would be Nero v2).

Appears you may be right.

Only because the list is being restricted to an unnecessarily small number of programs by overzealous rule-setting...

Seriously, the rules for this list basically say "Only list programs that are compatible with Vista, that aren't". Programs that just worked fine in XP but don't work in Vista can't be "mentioned", or at least aren't "eligible" for the list... yet would probably make up a much longer list.

Not everyone buys the latest and "greatest", but still expect it to work with an operating system whose job is to "run programs". Stuff that works with XP often works fine in 2000 as well, and that's a version back. So if you want an honest compatibility list, you shouldn't be limiting it to the latest version of programs (especially when "newer versions", like Nero, are whole separate products), and "on the shelf" programs. Just work on listing programs that, simply, aren't compatible. What's so damning about that?

You said it buddy!

I think people are running into problems when they upgrade and find their old programs incompatible in Vista rather than fresh new Vista installs. Thus, those who upgrade are the ones creating all this uproar.

So, it wouldn't be reasonable to restrict programs to those after Vista RTM'd. Of course, those programs written prior to Vista would most likely work in XP only and per chance in Vista under compatibility mode.

Why are you using vista them?

FYI there are tons of programs in both 2000 & xp which require compatability mode to be run, this isn't just a vista thing.

and why b***h about anything newer than nero 6 working when nero has been a coaster burner for sometime compared to free cd/dvd burners around which do a much much better job.

if your going to complain about older software not working on newer software, stop upgrading windows!

in my experiance, epson's print cd is a pain to get working in vista, but once your used to having to set the tray to manual and click some extra things its no biggie, ... oh Sonic R doesn't work in vista (but it doesn't work in XP either)

Not at all.

You try to run programs 3 or 4 versions out of date, and are surprised they don't run (actually, spacesurfer got it to work). That's EXACTLY the same as saying Nero 2 doesn't work on XP (3 versions out of date at the time of release) and such. Over 99% of apps that run on XP also work on Vista as-is. Besides, CD burning apps have been notorious to need upgrades to work with almost any OS (early Roxio versions were real bad for that). In fact, most apps even used to require upgrades to work with newer burners! And nevermind all the technology changes that happened in the underlying tech (different ASPI layers, ASAPI, SPTI, and various proprietary methods).

What you Vi$ta lovers forget is that it costs good money. For that money, a normal user would expect everything to work right out of the box, not to bring more restrictions and bloat. So when you try to push Vi$ta onto us, you'd better donate us a free copy, or else you're just Micro$oft's pimp$ (I say this out of general principle).

Since this topic is about incompatibilities, just ask anyone who works with audio production what has Vi$ta brought to him (with moving the audio drivers out of kernel mode). Yeah, even the regular sound card drivers have enormous problems. It would be OK if this was justified by... what was the reason, you say? To satisfy Hollywood companies? Common...

Every Windows NT version promised taking drivers out of user mode (and managed to do that, but not fully) with promises of stability, but brought only inconvenience.

Another thing. If learning the user interface from start isn't an incompatibility, I don't know what is.

Security? That was Micro$oft's fault in the first place, with every Window$ version full of holes like a Swiss cheese. And they try to remedy that how? By restricting user's access to everything? Viruses will find another way in, but the user will remain $crewed.

And blaming incompatibilities on driver's manufacturers isn't helping either, because with that you're just blowing wind in Micro$oft's sails who want to extort money from signing every 64-bit driver.

And if Nero has gone the bloat way, there's no reason others (Micro$oft) to follow it.

I'll stop now, because this post has gone into the not-desired direction (and I have lots more to say), but it was intended as a response to the "Vi$ta-pushers" (I can understand when someone works for M$ and feels as his duty to defend his job and I respect that, but when someone wants to pursuade others to part with their good money for some not-so-obvious benefits, it's suspicious - at least for me, I can not see any benefits that Vi$ta brings that are worth the money).

And I hope no harm will be done to this innocent post of mine 'cause I think it's valid response to the issues raised above.

GL

Great, that's one more program I haven't yet even tried in Vista yet that's required by my day to day "life". Epson Print CD doesn't work right? UGH! I sure hope there's an update for that. Of course, first I hope I can find my driver CD that even has Epson Print CD on it...

And by the way, no, I absolutely NEVER touched the compatibility settings in XP, in all the years I'd been using it. It never fixed anything, mainly because almost nothing (except ancient Win3.x programs I wouldn't've expected to work anyway) was broken.

(edit: Epson Print CD is a program that comes with Epson printers, allowing you to, well, do what I bought the printer for - print directly onto CDs. And yeah, the printer is "Vista era")

That doesn't make sense. We like an OS, and it works just fine for most people. Similarly, you like XP, and XP did cost money too, and you didn't give people copies, but that doesn't make you a "Micro$oft's pimp$". C'mon now... That's a double standard if I've ever seen one. Besides, we're not pushing Vista on anyone here, just debunking the common myth that basically nothing works.


Hardly anything changed. The start menu is shown differently (just like going from 9x or 2k to XP did). And the control panel stuff is shuffled around (ditto). By that standard, XP is incompatible. You make it sound like people have to learn to double click all over again. It's not nearly as drastic as say, the windows Win 3.11 to Win 95 change was, and people adapted to that just fine.


It's THEIR OWN FAULT. Who else are we supposed to blame for it? Some kind of universal scapegoat that we should blame should anything go wrong for any reason? Like when a computer BSODs because of buggy drivers, who do people blame? Yep, "teh evil evil M$!" Exactly the inverse than what you say -- hardware makers had a free ride for far too long, they can BSOD your box every 5 minutes, and all people will say is "Windows sucks! *#$#@$%$ Microsoft!"


But, their x86 drivers suck just as much so there's truly no excuse. And Comodo will sell them a signing certificate for $80/year, I hope Epson can afford that! Besides, NONE of the signing money goes to Microsoft, no matter who you get your cert from, so how's that extortion? The certs have a purpose: so you can tell for sure who made that driver/binary (you'll have to prove your identity before they issue you a cert).

On a side note, the latest Epson print CD works with Vista, and older versions can be made to work (pick tray 2 manually, you might have to use XP's drivers - thank Epson for that!)

A lot of software incompatibilities that I've dealt with comes from software that's coded poorly - writing files to places where a program has no business being (Filezilla and XML settings comes to mind). Microsoft has been telling devs for years - put your configuration files in Application Data where they belong, not in the program's directory.

The only other problem I have is with Notebook Hardware Control. That program seems to lock up my whole system from time to time (can't pinpoint why), but the developer hasn't made any attempt to make the software Vista compatible, nor has he updated it in over a year.

Indeed! LOTS of such programs won't work under XP if you're not an admin either, which has been a VERY common issue for quite a while in any big environment where we don't just make everyone a local admin.

Just this one, not to bog the thread down... Although I have answer for all the other points raised, but let's not turn this into another bashing...

Who said I liked XP? XP was also imposed onto me (by cutting off driver support and/or Adobe's insane requirements for photoshop/premiere). Now I didn't particularly like the 9X line either, because it was primitive - not really an OS, just a graphical shell over DOS.

So what do I like? nLited 2000 or XP - that's close to perfection.

Yeah, the old school - OS is an OS (Operating System), not everything including the kitchen sink. If I need a program for a speciffic task, I'll install it separately. All in one solutions can never be better than specialized programs - and I won't tolerate 'good enough'. But with Vi$ta (and partially with XP) I have no choice - I have to install everything (vLite isn't quite there yet i hear - I haven't tried it because, of course, I don't have Vi$ta).

As for prefetching and indexing - what if all that work goes to waste? What if I never use that program Windows was prefetching for me or never open that document it was giving me on a platter? Or if I simply chose to reformat? That's so inneficient - that's BLOAT. I like my Windows to do what I tell it to do, not the other way around.

OK, I got carried away again, let's not even touch phoning home and 'unbelievable restrictions'... Maybe open another topic (but I always say: why bother, who understands - understands.... And that's why Vi$ta lovers continue to amaze me - so much energy wasted trying to deny something that's so obvious...)

GL

Well, you can stop prefetching and indexing in vista as you could in XP. However, that doesn't change the fact that it churns the hard drive out of nowhere when it feels like doing that, just that it does it less often.

My biggest GUI gripes with it are that they totally mashed up the menus and killed the "ctrl alt del brings task manager" thing we've been all used to for years. Also it likes to turn off Aero when i use my TV Tuner. And since the ONLY reason i installed vista is for Aero (i installed it for DX10 actually, but realized it isn't worth crap...), XP + WindowBlinds FTW.

Also, it's slow. And as you can see in my sig i'm not trying to run it on 10 years old hardware. On my machine, XP is INSTANTANEOUS. I'd expect vista to be the same, but no, it isn't. It's got that sluggish feeling to it, even if it gets 800 more points in 3DMark06 than XP does. And you say drivers are still optimized for XP... Well, at least ATi drivers aren't anymore. When i had my 8600GT i used to get higher scores in XP though.

I won't talk about stuff that runs on XP but doesn't on vista, because you imply we must only list software released the day after tomorrow.

As for restrictions, i didn't get any, ever. I run a furtherly tweaked version of eXPerience's TinyVista (fits on a CD!), and it had UAC turned off by default, and also it makes you admin by default. I like that. However, i'm getting 4GB of RAM tomorrow and i'll have to install a full-blown x64 vista besides my TinyXP x32 which i'll probably keep as my main OS even if it won't see all the memory. Let's see how that turns out...

Yes, I still find that one annoying. The thing with 2k & XP was, there was the screen where you can lock your computer that can be shown when you do ctrl-alt-delete OR the task manager... Now ctrl-alt-del brings up the former, and the latter is ctrl-shift-esc. I think it's a good idea overall because you can bring up the one you want, but hitting ctrl-shift-esc... 3 buttons at once, spanning 6 rows of keys (and the gap above the row with numbers), all with your left hand, isn't quite as easy/doesn't feel as natural. I tend to lay my thumb across ctrl & shift (never had to do that before) and hitting escape with my middle finger (longest finger, easier to reach). Doesn't feel quite right... (well, you can use ctrl-shift on the right hand side, but I just don't really think about them keys on the right side).

It shouldn't be that slow on such a machine though. It's somewhat faster than my box, and everything is instantaneous on it.

Either ways, this topic is off on a tangent. This is about apps that aren't compatible (so far only a couple).

Edit: Was missing a f in "shift" (keyboard batteries low), got censored

I've been using Ctrl+Shift+Esc for years... I always tell people not to use Ctrl+Alt+Del because it was never designed to bring up Task Manager.

That's one good thing in Vista, that it's actually bringing the correct functionality (the lock screen) back to usage, and teaching people to use Ctrl+Shift+Esc

Attempt to get back on topic:

If you're running HDTach in compatibility mode, you're measuring compatibility mode, not your actual hard disk speed!

And the biggest source of incompatibility: prohibition to write to %programfiles% for regular users - Microsoft promoted that until XP. Hell, they even promoted .INI files in Windows3X - you can't expect every time Microsoft changes their mind to blame it on others!

GL

That got me wondering. So I just compared 2 passes of HDTach 3, on each the original exe in compat mode and the byte patched one (still no word from mods about the pic and/or patch), and the results were virtually identical (peak speed varied by about 5, random access is the exact same, average read varied by 0.2). The curves look much the same too, peaks as high/low, and it drops just the same near the end of the disk.

So I don't think it really changes anything.

Edit: Oh well. No one says anything, so I'll just risk it then! Hopefully it doesn't say "Group: banned" by my username tomorrow morning
Again, NOT illegal: it does NOT bypass any protection code/licensing/serial checks or such, it's merely for interoperability/to circumvent restrictions for use, which is deemed as acceptable by US Judges

Pic (version check in WinMain):


So either @ 0x1139 change 0x05 for 0x06 (makes it work with NT 5.x and 6.x), or @ 0x113A change 0x76 for 0xEB (makes it work with NT 5.x and over). Then it'll run on Vista & Win 2008 not in compat mode (and you can see it basically makes no difference in speed)

the Ctrl+Alt+Del thing was a minor annoyance for about 10 seconds until i figured out Ctrl+Shift+Esc was unchanged


I imposed that restriction so this thread didnt get flooded with "OMG Oregon Trail (linked for the kiddos) doesnt run on Vista! -see that proves Vista is incompatible with every thing ever made!1" type posts. (For the record though it works fine though)
if you have a recent program that is legitimately incompatible, please share it. but if the manufacturer has addressed the issue in a newer (free or lowpriced) version and you just refuse to upgrade, I cant categorize that as an incompatibility. However, Volatus may be pleased to see that I have added Nero 6 to the list after I discovered that there was a version released after the Vista RTM date which according to the rules, makes it subject to the list. Technically, it could be argued into the "Works, but with problems" category but as I stated before, modern versions of nero are pretty much crap and not worth the effort of arguing.

GrofLuigi, i also added a bit about the HDtach compatibility issue

as for the comments that Vista has too much extra junk in the trunk, yeah i have to agree. I replace IE with FF, WMP with VLC or more recently GOMPlayer, WLM with Pidgin, Burning Software with ImgBurn, RDC with MRemote, Disable defender, firewall, readyboost, sec center, sidebar, problem reporting and UAC and Im good.

Don't get me wrong... I do most of my burning (primarily DVD copies) with ImgBurn as well. I've even been known to create an image from Nero or any other program, just to burn it with ImgBurn. I've even run ImgBurn on a computer without a burner, to get additional information about the drive, or just for the fact that ImgBurn can eject AND insert the tray (I needed that once, too). And ImgBurn is 110% Vista compatible. ImgBurn just is a really clunky "solution" for making data and audio CDs and DVDs, so I rely on Nero for that. I also hate all the extra and useless crap that comes with it.

SERIOUSLY. DO WE NEED "NERO DESKTOP SEARCH"?! >-( (haet)

So yeah, I agree, Nero (as a package) sucks. But "Nero Burning ROM" is pretty much the best at what I need to get done. Unless someone has an alternative that isn't "programmed in mom's basement for shareware plz"...

Nero Portable Edition FTW.

Anyway, my new RAM's in, and since i found the same PQI i had, i thought why the heck shouldn't i run all 6GB. They don't seem to cooperate though, i've been struggling all night to get them going at a half-decent frequency but still nothing.

Vista 64 coming in today. Hope i'll get this **** memory sorted out.

Here's a new one.

It's incompatible with my way of life. The way I browse and manage files, the streamlined data organization I've become accustomed to in XP. The lack of a functional status bar in Explorer. The lack of detailed information on appropriate files - like a description of EXE and DLL files, unless I go to Properties. The omission of proper navigation buttons (like, you know, "Up") in favor of collapsing (and therefore useless) "path buttons" in the address bar. The inability to access "Downloads", say, from the common My Documents folder. The lack of ability to customize so-called "favorite places" on the dialog boxes. There's much more, but I haven't come up with it yet...

Needless to say I think I may soon be going back to XP on my desktop supercomputer. Performance is the least of my complaints - actually, the performance of Vista (after vLitening out about 4.5gb of useless bull) is almost better than XP. Although I noticed that Photoshop takes longer to load - quite noticeable since it only takes about 1.5 seconds on XP. Maybe I'll try XP 64 this time around. I hate the WOW64 system though... bloat, bloat, bloat. Not quite as bad as Vista though.

But the fact is, my way of life worked with XP - and no, XP didn't create it (it helped, though). I am, of course, using the latest version of my way of life. And my way of life was "on the shelf" so to speak, when Vista RTMed. I was even using Vista shortly after, too. It sucked then... amazingly, it sucks now.

edit: I can also confirm that Epson Print CD 1.4 and lower don't work properly. Epson doesn't provide updates (or even a downloadable version...!), so the version that came with your printer is the version you're stuck with, so if you have a version that doesn't work, you're screwed. 1.5 works, but 1.5 has a goofy DLL error that Epson should have fixed (they didn't include a certain DLL file in their installation). You can get 1.5 through warez channels, but we all know the policy on warez... (the issue with Print CD <=1.4 is that it doesn't detect the printers under Vista, and you have to do a Manual Print and set the correct settings yourself - and hope it works...)

That's not a program at all (still not many of those), so completely off-topic, but anyways.


Actually, unlike XP, you don't have to use the status bar. You can use columns made specifically for that, like "copyright", "product name", "product version", etc (and many other very useful ones for other tasks). And this way, you see the infos for every single binary at once.


Proper as in "the old way"? Being the old way doesn't make it proper. But hey, if you can't figure out the breadcrumb navigation (it's not useless at all), and that alt+up arrow doesn't work for you, then you can look into small addons like QTTabBar which will give you the old buttons (and more if you want), and tabs in explorer.exe too if you want that.


There isn't a "My Documents" folder on Vista (it's just a junction). It's rather C:\Users\YourUserName\Documents, and on most installs, the downloads go to C:\Users\YourUserName\Downloads. Actually, you can even make a shortcut to it in the "favorite links" section at the top left of explorer.exe -- a big time saver compared to XP (just grab the Downloads folder, and drag it to the favorite links area, done).


You can. The customizations you make to that in explorer.exe also show up in common dialogs. BTW, them links are stored in C:\Users\YourUserName\Links -- feel free to add/remove some this way too. It works just the same.


The main cause I have seen for that, is the default printer not being online (PS' fault actually). This might not be your issue though, just saying.

Well, that sure smashes, and at least improves on, a couple of issues...! I had tried the standard intuitive measures to edit the favorites area, like right click, Open Folder (like in the quick launch bar of XP, no longer in QL of Vista) and that sure wasn't my first guess. Cool!

The breadcrumb navigation would be massively more useful if it would allow one to actually "drop down" the extended list. When browsing a folder that branches off the desktop, there's no way to go higher than C:\Users\Yourname\Desktop, although it should be possible to browse back to "Yourname" at least (since most of your data is now stored there, not in "My Documents" which was previously, you guessed it, accessible from the desktop). To navigate, I've even had to manually BACKSPACE a part of the path to get back out of it! Ugh! The other problem is that when you browse a deeply nested folder, the parts that are too long are simply erased from the trail, so you can't just jump back to C:\ in one click. Quite an annoyance...

The point there is simply that MS did a botched up job of making those new locations accessible. They half-kept the old thought of preventing people from seeing their profile folder (e.g. not going higher up than the desktop folder when browsing the desktop - same in XP), while making it essential - like the downloads folder. There's my beef.

And this is probably for another topic that'll just be destined for the trash can anyway... >.<

edit: The fact that I would have to actually keep specific, context sensitive columns like those for EXEs, open at all times, is still a deal breaker. That's merely a workaround, since those columns were also present in XP. Vista's explorer offers no intuitive replacement for that missing information... hell, people can no longer even hover over an icon - a trojan, for example, disguised as a text file - and see that it's actually an application. Fugly.

Yes, the breadcrumbs nav isn't perfect. As for branching off of the desktop, I'm not quite sure. I haven't opened a link that locked me in there yet. To get to most of my stuff (documents, downloads, etc), I tend to mainly use a quick launch shortcut -- not by clicking on it, but by hitting windows key + the number of the quick launch icon (yes, no need to even click those darn things anymore!), which just brings me to c:\Users\MyUserName\ -- everything at my disposal by hitting 2 keys Then if you want to go to your desktop, press D, enter, and you're there (ok, 4 keys total), and it does let me get out using the bread crumbs nav.

And yes, you can't go back to the root of a drive from a very deep path using bread crumbs nav in one click, but the up button didn't do that either. Quickest way IMO, is pressing alt-d to land in the address bar, and typing c:\ [enter] (yes, I do use the keyboard LOTS!) - or just using alt+up arrow a few times. But yes, it could be improved for sure.

...

All of this has nothing to do with the original po$t.

---

I have one obscure codec that won't work in WMP11 in Vista. My old screen capture software (the last freeware FRAPS) also doesn't seem to work in Vista.

Another one for you.

The ADPCM codec in vista isn't compatible with a lot of older games that worked fine under XP, and copying the XP files in Vista doesn't solve the problem either. Why oh why did they have to update something that hadn't been changed since 1994??? I'm seriously thinking of installing XP x64 and dumping Vista for this reason, along with a few more quirks that are minor yet that i can't get used to.

To the above:

I can understand why they did away with the ancient audio management system, they did so for good reason - all drivers since AC'97 have been "hacking around" the Windows audio system and merely providing emulation for older programs. It all just worked together so seamlessly.

What I can't justify is why Microsoft in their infinite idiocy (ffs, the status bar bug) couldn't add a simple emulation subsystem for older applications, perhaps making it an optional add-on or the like. *shakes fist*

Uh, didn't you contradict yourself here? But it DID work seamlessly in XP.



They probably didn't do it because they made Virtual PC free. And there is the compatibility mode, which unfortunately is nothing more than a joke.

What are some games that this directly causes not to run in Vista?

No, what I meant there is that the "hacking around" in XP worked so seamlessly. It only appeared that nothing had chanced since 1994 because all that stuff was still being emulated in the background. It's only in Vista that they said "Eh, I'm lazy, time to delete that old stuff".

Age of Empires 2 loads but unable to start a load a saved game.Or to start a new mission.

OMG. I finally found a 2nd app that doesn't run as-is (out of well over 200 different apps)

modifype needs to run in XP compatibility mode or it acts retarded, and doesn't understand any arguments passed...

Just for having weird issues over such trivial things, I just might share the source code to my own toy (FixPE) that does the same thing (w/o the bugs of course). It's about a hundred lines of C# total, 7KB compiled. It's really simple to do anyways.

I have two:

-The french digital encyclopedia "Encyclopedia Universalis". Not the latest version (thought released after and compatible with XP), yet I'm not going to buy the new version to run it on Vista, given the price. In this case the "last version" rule shouldn't apply. (it should apply only if there is a free upgrade available IMO).

-The Canon Powershot S10 driver. We had to buy a flash memory drive, which after all is much easier than connecting the photo camera. Yet, it's something that Vista refused to run. Canon's website never provided any update.

added the bit about modifyPE only in compatibility mode.
as for Age of Empires II, my boss plays it on a Dell D830 with Vista SP1 without any problems. If you are interested, ill ask him what version/patches hes running but to my knowledge its an off the cd install with no hacks.
the latest version rule is there because this isnt a "try to find ancient software that wont run on Vista thread" its more of a "find things that should work on Vista but don't thread"
as for the Powershot S10 not working under Vista, the product release date was October of 1999 - 2+ years before XP was released which puts it outside the scope of #4

I have the old Universalis 10 (that's already 3 versions out of date) working fine under Vista SP1. They even have a page about it on their site here.

For the camera, it's unfortunate, but it's a 2 megapixel point & shoot from 1999 (9 years old is a LONG time in the world of digital cameras), so it's understandable that at some point they cut the support... A $10 card reader works fine here indeed, or one could get a 6MP+ camera that gives much more detailed photos, has a better zoom range, works much faster, has a far better LCD and better/more modern menus/better processing features, more advanced functions (like histograms), uses more modern card types, can use FAT32 formatted cards too, has USB2, often records quicktime movies and such, and quite often nowadays even has an orientation sensor (no need to manually rotate your photos anymore), etc -- all for $100-ish. Might be time for an upgrade really.

@geek: about ModifyPE, I'm not quite sure who to blame, as it checks arguments in a non-standard way (it doesn't even work if you type modifype, the program name itself is case sensitive too! it has to be ModifyPE)