No point in running Vista these days. Either XP or Win7.

I only own 1 that requires more then Dx9 so have a PC that dual boots between XP x32 and Win7 x64

No reason you can't do the same with Vista if you wish, Best of both worlds!

Jackhead wrote on 2024-02-15, 21:13:

So i wonder someone here running vista 32bit ?

I had 2 Vista machines (32 bit Vista Business), but both of them suffered motherboard failures.

Do what the others suggest: use Windows 7.

dr_st wrote on 2024-02-15, 21:51:

No point in running Vista these days. Either XP or Win7.

Vista is a lady, a queen. And she's majestic, has grace. 👑

.. and by SP2, she's almost as capable as Windows 7. She has support for DX11, as well, with the Platform Update.

My wife has a vista 32bit so laptop never been a fan of the os other that work or home it’s been awkward for gaming be it installing or playing and compatibility more was practically defunct.

Greywolf1 wrote on 2024-02-16, 09:26:

My wife has a vista 32bit so laptop never been a fan of the os other that work or home it’s been awkward for gaming be it installing or playing and compatibility more was practically defunct.

Vista introduced the UAC (user account control).
Some sort of nanny or parental control for the user.
It's still in Windows 7, but less intrusive by default.

One of the biggest differences was that Vista prohibited being an super user (administrator) all the time.

That's why programs can't store information in any random location anymore, unless the permission for these locations have been altered.

The biggest shift from Win XP to Vista/7 was that configuration files (say, dosbox.conf) no longer were being stored in the application directory by default.

It was of course possible to work around this, by changing things manually.

Edit: From a technical point of view, both Windows Vista and 7 are quite similar.
In their latest incarnations, at least.

Late Windows Vista got many things back-ported via Platform Update.

The biggest difference is that the graphics system in Vista is older.

It still renders everything through that composition manager and can't accelerate plain GDI (not GDI+).

The positive side is that Windows Vista has a more generous, more brilliant GUI.
With lots of information and assistant programs.

By comparison, Windows 7 looks like a dull village maid.
Like Vista Lite, so to say. Perhaps to please Windows 2000 fans, not sure.

Edit: But from a pure technical point of view, both Windows 7 and Vista are equally relics.

Windows 8.0 might be the most rational choice.

Unlike 8.1, the 64-Bit edit ion can still work with older Athlon 64 processors.

Windows 8 introduced support for USB 3 and had a software-rasterizer (WARP) for its Aero Glass-like GUI.

So it's no longer being necessary to have a fancy GPU or latest drivers to avoid that Vista Basic design.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Advance … zation_Platform

Windows Vista vs. 7 is a matter of personal preference. I prefer the Windows Vista user interface; Windows 7 also got rid of InkBall and crippled several built-in applications.

I messed around with Windows 10 32bit some on an AM2 system. Even managed to test and run a Voodoo 2. It wasn't bad at all with 4gb of RAM. Using the internet was another story for the old dual core though.

Does using 7 really offer up any advantages over 10?

Other than hardware issues win 10 totally made my laptop unusable and ended up having to reinstall win7

To be clear i was also not a big Vista fan back in the days. But as new OS you look more forward to 64Bit DX10 and the new features.
My perspective is more to look back get all the XP x86 stuff working, and also able to run some early DX10 games (like Hellgate London). Nothing more or less.
Dualboot is a option i will consider. Maybe i give Vista another try after all..

If it's just about running a few DirectX 10 games..

It might be possible to run Vista on XP by using Virtualbox 4.1 or an early version of VMware Player. They still supported 32-Bit hosts.

The VMWare Player I remember using didn't even need hardware-assisted virtualization yet.

I remember running Windows 7 with Aero Glass in that VMWare Player..

So there was atleast DirectX9EX or DirectX9 Shader Model 2 support in that VM, maybe even more.

These VM programs did convert DirectX to OpenGL, so even a Windows XP host can do it.

Provided that the graphics card/driver have an OpenGL support that's good enough.

Anyway, if these games mainly want to be run under Vista/7 then that's all that's needed, maybe.
Maybe they will run under the enhanced DirectX9 runtimes provided by Vista/7.

Edit: Let's just think of it as an "XP mode" done in reverse. 😉

Edit: I *think* it was VMware Player 3.1 or 4..

Jo22 wrote on 2024-02-16, 08:54:

dr_st wrote on 2024-02-15, 21:51:

No point in running Vista these days. Either XP or Win7.

Vista is a lady, a queen. And she's majestic, has grace. 👑

.. and by SP2, she's almost as capable as Windows 7. She has support for DX11, as well, with the Platform Update.

You're preaching to the choir here... I ran Vista all the way until late 2020...

Yes, the kernel is almost as capable as Win7 (could even get Server 2008 security patches all the way up to 2023), and DX11 is supported on some level (but D2D 1.1, for example, is not).
However, there are a ton of OS libraries that were not ported / upgraded, so the application level compatibility started really falling behind after the official end-of-support in 2017, and even somewhat before that. Lack of OS-level support for modern 256-bit ciphers, for instance. It really started killing TLS compatibility.

I broke down when I saw that I have to struggle just to get basic applications like modern web browsers to play nice. This was around the time that Vista kernel extension projects got into higher gear, but as I said in my upgrade post - I didn't see the point of applying kludge after kludge to trick apps to think they run on Win7, when I could simply upgrade to Win7. If I really cared about some small difference in the UI - it is easier to apply a shell/UI customizer to make Win7 look like Vista.

dr_st wrote on 2024-02-16, 19:57:

You're preaching to the choir here... I ran Vista all the way until late 2020... […]
Show full quote

You're preaching to the choir here... I ran Vista all the way until late 2020...

Yes, the kernel is almost as capable as Win7 (could even get Server 2008 security patches all the way up to 2023), and DX11 is supported on some level (but D2D 1.1, for example, is not).
However, there are a ton of OS libraries that were not ported / upgraded, so the application level compatibility started really falling behind after the official end-of-support in 2017, and even somewhat before that. Lack of OS-level support for modern 256-bit ciphers, for instance. It really started killing TLS compatibility.

I broke down when I saw that I have to struggle just to get basic applications like modern web browsers to play nice. This was around the time that Vista kernel extension projects got into higher gear, but as I said in my upgrade post - I didn't see the point of applying kludge after kludge to trick apps to think they run on Win7, when I could simply upgrade to Win7. If I really cared about some small difference in the UI - it is easier to apply a shell/UI customizer to make Win7 look like Vista.

Oh, I see. 2017 was about the time I've left Windows 7 behind!
I suppose I've missed about anything that happened past that.. 😅

Here's my story, please let me tell. 😃

My last Windows 7 PC broke in ~2017, and I saw no purpose to fix it anymore.

It just needed new caps, essentially, but since Windows 7 was going to be EOL soon and the CPU didn't have CMPXCHG16B instruction, it was the end of the road, anyway.

Because without that instruction, Windows 8.1 64-Bit and higher wouldn't have run on that motherboard anymore, anyway.

So Windows 7 was about the last OS for the hardware, anyway.
Everything newer (except Win 8.0) was not going to boot, anymore.

I could have bought a new PC, sure, but there was a catch: intel had planned to drop BIOS/CSM support.:

Newer mainboards nolonger could boot free, independent software. Or Windows 98.

Which meant to me, that x86 now was becoming a dead, proprietary platform without a future! 😢

So I decided to boycott x86. By giving up on CSM, they made the PC platform losing its soul.

Sounds like overreacting and drama, right? 🙂
Not to me. There were two things that historically made the PC successful: The PC BIOS and the open design (=unlicensed clones).

- With the death of the PC BIOS, there's no more reason to keep VGA/VESA BIOS on the graphics card.

- Without PC BIOS, Option-ROMs nolonger work.

- Without PC BIOS (CSM), legacy OSes like Windows 98 or DOS nolonger can be booted.

- Without PC BIOS, Real-Mode and the 8086 instruction set are now becoming superfluous.

- Without them needed, they will be removed from future x86 microchip silicon.

- Which in turn means that x86 virtualization will become less powerful or less accurate.

- Virtualization software then has to resort to incomplete 8086/i386 software emulation.

- Things like V86 or Intel-VT/AMD-V might be removed or feature-reduced in future processors, too.

So all in all, without CSM/BIOS being available, I realized there was no freedom in sight anymore.

Everything was going to be downhill.
X86 was going to be a platform that's sole purpose would be to run Windows 10/11.

Users couldn't run any prior OS as an alternative anymore, because they'd require CSM/BIOS.

Even if they had UEFI support, there was no legacy emulation as with BIOS (int13h, ps/2 mouse/keyboard emulation).

Windows 7 had been made incompatible on purpose with prior UEFI era systems already.

So all in all, UEFI and TPM/SecureBoot essentially meant that users nolonger do own their PC. No more full control to the user.

Even if SecureBoot is not a default setting and can be by-passed, it's just a matter of time once it's can nolonger be by-passed.

Knowing intel and Microsoft, future mainboards UEFI versions will surely be required to have TPM/SecureBoot permanently being enabled .
Otherwise, they won't get any approval.

But if OSes have to be signatured all the time, homebrew OSes like Kolibri OS or MenuetOS could nolonger be booted. Even if they had UEFI support.

If if I wanted to run my own booter floppy game, I couldn't anymore.
No signature, no boot. Bottom line: my PC nolonger belongs to me.

So I decided to rather not get a new PC anymore. It was just not worth it anymore.

I thought I could just as well leave the dying x86 platform behind and go ARM.

So I moved to an a Raspberry Pi as an interim solution (as the main computer, I mean).
Which I'm still working with, 7 years later.

It's not a great experience, but at least I'm still an user with an intact self-determination.

That's an interesting story. Thanks for sharing!

I suppose I would also leave Windows 7 behind if my last PC running it broke. That desktop is still up and running, although currently with a temporary motherboard as the original P5Q PRO is currently dead. I also have a Thinkpad X220 laptop dual-booting Win7 and Win8.1.

You are probably correct looking into the future when CSM/BIOS will be done for, but as far as I know, even now, 7 years later, new motherboards still have some CSM/BIOS support. They probably can run DOS, although not sure they can still run Win7 properly, without drivers and all. As a strong proponent of the principle of matching Windows version to contemporary hardware, I would never even try.

Win7 compatibility window, however, pretty much covers the Vista window in full, that's why I have no problem recommending it to anyone who would consider Vista.

So i wonder someone here running vista 32bit ?

I was running 32-bit versions of Windows on my main PC up to and including Windows 10. I was using PAE hack for more than 3.5 GB RAM support.

Like to share my experience. i installed win vista x86 ultimate with sp2 and so far im pretty happy! Anything works like a charm. I installed around 25 XP Games very early ones and also later ones that have dx9/10 support. I also like on vista that i can run now 2k and 4k resolution. What was with xp a pain.
Here my specs:

Asus P6T WS Pro, i7 990x (4,5GHz) , 3GB Ram, GTX Titan black