Updated: 16/07/07
I have a custom PC which originally had Windows XP Professional installed, I have recently upgraded to Windows Vista and the results are mixed, the majority of my hardware works fine and also the majority of my software with a few that refuse to install or work correctly.
I have an Windows Vista HP OEM Disk, which can only do a Clean Install of Windows. Fortunately, it did not format my drive but moved the old C:\windows, C:\Documents and Settings and C:\Program Files in to a C:\Windows.old folder. Fortunately, I have a lot of room on my HD.
Outlook Express has been replaced with Windows Mail and stores mail and contacts differently. Had to use the File, Import facility in Mail to import my old OE mail and address book into Mail. Email is now stored as seperate .eml files and contacts are stored in Contacts folder in my profile as seperate files.
To support my older software, I have set up a dual boot with Windows XP. Note, that if you install Windows XP -after- vista you have to configure Boot files using BCDEdit (see part 3).
Hardware
| Hardware device | Make and Model | Drivers |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte KT400 GA-7VAXP | Gigabyte VIA 4in1 |
| Processor | Athlon XP 2100 1.7GHz | Found ok |
| Graphics Card | ATI Radeon 9800 (AGP) | Replaced MS drivers with ATI drivers |
| Network Card | Realtek RTL8139 | Found ok |
| Sound Card | Creative Xi-Fi | Creative |
| PCI TV Capture Card | TOP10 WDM TW6800 | Not compatible, can use XP driver but software is unsupported. |
| USB 2 Drivers | VIA | Found ok |
| MPU 401 MIDI | VIA | Not supported! |
| Game Port Joystick | Gravis Destroyer | Not supported! |
| Game Port Joypad | Gamestar evolution | Not supported! |
| Scanner | CanoScan LIDE 30 | Canon USA have drivers |
| Inkjet Printer | Epson C42+ | Found ok |
| Laser Printer | Brother HL1270N | Found ok |
| Monitor | NEC LV17m | Found ok |
| USB Joystick | Ariston Ares | Found ok |
| USB Joypad | Logic 3 | Found ok after installing drivers. |
Software
| Title | Vista Compatible | Notes and links |
| Windows Defender | Yes | Already supplied |
| EditPad Lite | Yes | |
| Filezilla (FTP) | Yes | |
| Firefox 2 | Yes | |
| iTunes 7 | Yes | Some issues, but works |
| Quicktime 7 | Yes | Had some stability problems but works |
| Java 1.6 | Yes | |
| iPod Nano | Yes | Detected iPod ok |
| Tortoise SVN | Yes | |
| McAfee VirusScan v12 | Yes | |
| McAfee Spamkiller | Yes | |
| The Master Genelogist v6 | Yes | Install it to C:\Apps instead of C:\Program files as it needs R/W access to its Programs folder to stop the error messages. |
| Winace 2.6.5i | Yes | |
| Spectaculator | Yes | Spectaculator |
| Audio Converter 5.5 | Yes | |
| WordPerfect Office X3 | Yes | Quattro Pros menus are boxed but fine otherwise, install SP2 when prompted in WP program. Get Regedit errors in Quattro Pro. |
| Quicken 2004 | No | Fails to load up, had to replace this with Personal Accountz which should be installed in a user folder or C:\Apps. |
| Paint Shop Pro 7 | Yes | |
| Paint Shop Pro X (upgrade) | Yes | |
| Dreamweaver 4 | Yes | A error appears when exiting but seems ok. |
| Steam client | Yes | |
| Amiga Forever 2006 | Yes | |
| Winuae 1.3.4 | Yes | |
| Acrobat Reader 8 | Yes | |
| Black Hawk Down | Yes | |
| Civilisation 4 | Yes | Requires latest patch v1.61 |
| Brothers in Arms: EIB | No | Fails to install, no window appears. |
| Nero 6 Reloaded | No | Known stability problems. I haven't tried this yet. |
| Virtual PC 2004 | No | |
| Virtual PC 2007 | Yes | Works, but complains about being an unsupported OS. |
| eBay Turbo Lister | Yes | |
| AmigaDE | Yes | Amiga.com |
| Winguide | Yes | Aminet |
| Elf Bowling | Yes | NStorm |
| HTML Help Workshop | Yes | Sometimes fails to save help file, removing path from filename helps. |
| 4D 2003 | Yes | |
| Alien Attack | Yes | Miniclip |
| Real Player 10 Gold | Yes | |
| Google Toolbar | Yes | |
| Wingnuts | Yes | Freeverse |
| Excel/Word/PP Viewer | Yes | |
| Power DVD 4 | Issues | Works but reports as being incompatible. Need to upgrade to v7 or WinDVD. |
| Worms 2 | No | Visual C++ runtime errors |
| Motorola Handset Manager | Yes | |
| WinTVR3 | No | Reports as being Incompatible and does not install |
| EMC Retrospec 7.5 | Some issues | Need to re-arrange IDE devices to recognise my DVD-RW drive. |
| Google Earth 4 | Yes | |
| Ultimate Doom | Some issues | Needs dplay.dll and shortcuts set to compatibility mode: Windows XP SP2, 640x480, 256 colours. |
| Half Life 2 | Yes | |
| SiSoft Sandra 2007 | Yes | |
| X2 - The Threat | Some issues | Installs but Windows Media Encoder 9 will fail to install, but the game is still playable, preferably with a USB Joystick. |
| Norton Partition Magic 8 | No |
Only works if you enable Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode otherwise it will report no partitions! Disk Management on Vista does what I need to do. |
| PhotoStudio 5 | Yes | |
| PhotoBase 3 | Yes | |
| Omnipage SE | Yes | Complains about not updating registry but works ok. |
| Visual Studio 2003 | Some issues | Has a number of minor issues with Vista, try VS 2005 or later or the Express versions. |
| Norton Ghost 2002 | Yes | No problems |
| Norton Utilities 2002 | No | Need SystemWorks 2007 or later. Probably cheaper to use freeware tools. |
| Audacity 1.2.6 | No | Fails to run. |
| EXPStudio Audio Ed | Yes | |
| OpenGL Viewer 2.28 | Yes | |
| Half Life 2 Episode 1 | Yes | |
| Nero Burning Rom 7.8 | Yes | New version which I bought on line from Nero's store. |
| Aegis PhysX driver | Yes | |
| Civilization III | Yes | Some issues with dialog boxes but plays ok. |
| Doom 3 | Yes | |
| Max Payne 2 | Yes | |
| Midnight Run 2 | Yes | |
| Max Payne 1.05 | Some issues | Plays ok, although no sound in the inter-game movies. |
| Flight Simulator X | Yes | |
| Jaws PDF Creator 3.4 | Some issues | Needed to create a printer using the JawsPDFCreatorPort and Generic driver so PDFs can be created. |
| Hauppauge HVR 1100 | Yes | Need WinTV v4 downloaded from website. |
More programs to follow...