First, I looked and used search before posting (really), but I'm losing my sight in my old age, and may've missed something. I got Vista 64 Ultimate that came with SP1 integrated. It seems SP1 effectively disables all the previous unsigned driver work arounds like bcdedit, F8, etc. Figures the very last program I need, doesn't have a signed driver. Illusion&Hope BT878.sys, only modded for 64 bit avail. from Planet AMD. I ransacked services and registry--anywhere that looked like it might harbor some chance, but didn't find any way to set an "ignore driver signing" policy like in the good 'ol XP days. Is there anything in the pipeline to disable this nonsense?...or where one can find a signed version of BT878.sys? There's ReadyDriverPlus as a boot workaround to install wayward drivers, but it conflicts with Acronis, and tries to boot into Acronis as if it was at the F11 point, (but doesn't actually go past that point). I'd really rather disable it internally anyway. Thanks for any ideas or info.

maybe have to change the keystrokes??
i'm not sure also

Try this: "bcdedit /set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS"
in your Run command line with out the quotes.

Everything I've been reading says the integrated SP1 disables ALL the tricks--and you can't remove any of the "fixes" it provides. There are 4-5 different versions of the bcdedit method, but all are no longer working. I can see MS setting things up to keep dummies out of trouble, but there should be a limit to this insanity. Seems if anyone is smart enough to turn folder/file control from SYSTEM over to Administrator, User, etc., they should be able to do something as mundane as installing an "unsigned driver".

I believe this decision in X64 vista is to help people move over to Vista and 64 bit without issue. 80% of Bluescreens or there abouts are caused by 3rd party drivers. The average end user doesnt realise this and immediately blames Microsoft (and subsequently switches back to XP). So IMO what Microsoft did here is a smart move.
What is it your trying to install that you cant btw?

I got down to one lonely driver, and that's the BT878.sys video capture. A very common driver that millions of basic DVR style cards rely upon (for those who only need to capture an image to upload, etc,. not the 4-16 screen surv. software that comes with some cards). It originally came by Illusion&Hope, but was ported to run x64 by Sergey Sakharov. It runs on XP 64 perfectly. When it got ported, that fried the integrity of the digital signature. Vista SP1 doesn't like fried signatures on drivers, and won't let you install it, even if you know it's clean. Odd though, is an option in internet settings that allows you to uncheck the "check for valid sigs on downloaded programs". Saw no benefit from it though It's true, that some folks need MS to hold their hand to make sure they keep out of mischief (like some of my friends and neighbors), but personally, I feel that if I want to crash and trash my machine, it should my choice--not the babysitters at MS. I imagine a fix will pop up sooner or later--sooner preferably.

Finally ended up using ReadyDriverPlus 1.1. It adds the folder C:\BOOT, and boots Vista up through there. I did mess with a couple more things in "Services" which enabled the complete F8 prompt where I could click the "disable driver signing"...still didn't help. I restored a clean image with Acronis, then installed RDP 1.1. RDP does have timing options during installation so you can still boot into Vista, or dual boot. If you don't use dual boot, etc. then RDP installation is pretty much "click next". RDP, which reminds me a lot of AutoIt, goes through the F8 layout, clicks "start windows normally, and then just as fast, clicks "disable driver signing". That unsigned video capture driver loaded up without a glitch, and is fully functional. Note, that RDP will not work right if you have the Acronis F11 recovery feature installed. It looks like it wants to start Acronis recovery, but doesn't actually do so. Use an Acronis recovery CD instead, and you're good to go. ...(still be nice to have an official MS method)

Nicely done! and i agree with you, it should be your decision to trash your machine. There should be an easy way to turn it off in advanced system properties, but it should warn you or something. Its not fair otherwise.

if the file *.sys have a test sgining, you can enable TESTSIGNING Mode to use it.

open command prompt as administrator, run this command:

bcdedit.exe -set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS
bcdedit.exe -set TESTSIGNING ON

then restart your computer.

But, "Test Mode" will be display in the desktop.