I could use some help running a Windows Vista machine

Tobin_The_Great · February 22, 2020

To Long, Didn't Read: I'm having trouble getting a reliable copy of Windows Vista Home Premium.

I built a new gaming computer and I had all of my old parts lying around. I wanted to play Fallout 3 and the wiki has an enormous guide to getting it to run with Windows 10, since it was built for Windows XP and Vista. Obviously the sensible, levelheaded thing to do was to use my old machine and one of those old OS's to run that one, single game. I should note that the computer in question uses the following:

CPU: Intel Core 17 2600

GPU: EVGA Nvidia Gtx 560 (Yeah, I know it probably can't handle high res graphics mods)

RAM: 16GB (4X4GB) Corsair Vengeance DDR3 at 1600MHz (in blue)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD Rev 1.0

My mom actually managed to get a Windows XP installation disk for $10 that seems to let us use it's activation key an indefinite number of times. I'm not sure what exactly the deal with that is, but I assume it either means Microsoft doesn't care about licensing an OS they can't profit from, or it has something to do with the fact that the disk doesn't look like it's for consumer use. It claims it should only be used on Dell systems, despite it working fine with my mom's Apple and my custom machine. All of that is beside the point, I have Windows XP and the game installed and working great. Well, as great as a Bethesda RPG can run... Anyway, here are my issues. I only have access to a 32 bit copy of XP, 64 bit copies exist but only the Professional version, which seems hard to find, the Profession version was only updated to Service Pack 2, and Fallout 3 runs on Service Pack 3.

As I said, I do have the game running fine but I'd like the option to mod it with higher resolution graphics and I just don't really like not using all of the resources I have. Windows Vista Home Premium can use my full amount of RAM and let my CPU run at 64 bit but Microsoft obviously doesn't sell it anymore and physical disks on ebay are mostly 32 bit and many look pretty sketchy. I wouldn't mind torrenting an iso file but I don't have any experience with that and I'm nervous about malware. So, could anyone help me find a way to get a working copy of Vista Home Premium (or better)? And any comments or advice on this fairly silly project would be excellent as well. Thank you.

Mateyyy · February 22, 2020

I mean, if it runs on Vista it should run on 7, and I'd much rather have that instead of Vista. There should be more keys around for it too compared to Vista, and I also don't know about any official way to download it off the internet, whereas with 7 you can, you'll just need to type in your product key first.

Also, have you just read the wiki for running Fallout 3 on Windows 10 or have you actually tried it yourself? I had it installed a while back and ran perfectly fine without any tinkering (on W10).

LogicalDrm · February 22, 2020

Your TLDR doesn't really meet with actual questions. Are you asking for where to get Vista or something else? I bought Vista Pro couple years ago from eBay.

As for the game, released 2008 it would have been well in Vista and with 7 released next year, patched to run on that too. Finding correct GPU drivers would be the biggest issue.

Tobin_The_Great · February 22, 2020

13 minutes ago, Mateyyy said:

I mean, if it runs on Vista it should run on 7, and I'd much rather have that instead of Vista. There should be more keys around for it too compared to Vista, and I also don't know about any official way to download it off the internet, whereas with 7 you can, you'll just need to type in your product key first.

Also, have you just read the wiki for running Fallout 3 on Windows 10 or have you actually tried it yourself? I had it installed a while back and ran perfectly fine without any tinkering (on W10).

I don't think I've tried it in 7 but the Steam page says that it wasn't built for it and it might not work. The system requirements recommend XP or Vista. And I have gotten it to work somewhat well on Windows 10 but still not great, and it really doesn't seem to like my main desktop. It runs better on my laptop with an i7 and no GPU than my main desktop with an i9 and 2080 Ti.

Tobin_The_Great · February 22, 2020

2 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

Your TLDR doesn't really meet with actual questions. Are you asking for where to get Vista or something else? I bought Vista Pro couple years ago from eBay.

As for the game, released 2008 it would have been well in Vista and with 7 released next year, patched to run on that too. Finding correct GPU drivers would be the biggest issue.

I'm looking for a reliable copy of Vista or an alternative. Does it work with Windows 7? The Steam page says that it might not work well. And Nvidia seems to have all the drivers I'd need on their website.

LogicalDrm · February 22, 2020

4 minutes ago, Tobin_The_Great said:

I'm looking for a reliable copy of Vista or an alternative. Does it work with Windows 7? The Steam page says that it might not work well. And Nvidia seems to have all the drivers I'd need on their website.

Steam or users? 7 would be better than Vista in pure OS stability.

Master Disaster · February 22, 2020

To clear a few things up...

Windows XP X64 is not the same OS as Windows XP. XP came first, then MS used XP as a base for Server 2003 before then using Server 2003 as a base for XP 64. The reason XP64 only goes up to SP2 is because that was the last SP released for Server 2K3. Avoid XP64 at all costs.

Sounds like your mom got hold of a rare XP VLK or Volume License Key. They were intended for large corporations who have possibly hundreds of computers, essentially you would say to MS "I want a key for my 100 machines", they say "Sure, that'll be £10,000 please", you pay them and they give you a key never never expires but will only work on a VLK copy of the OS and require no activation. The idea is so IT support only need to keep track of 1 key, not 100.

If you want a Vista disc now the best way is to torrent it. I have a genuine Vista Ultimate disc and it no longer reads in a drive and from what I hear that's a pretty common issue. Download a Retail ISO with SP3, burn it to a DVD and profit. As long as you've got an AV running with real time protection theres very little chance of it infecting your main computer and as long as get one with lots of good feedback and a high number of seeds you can be pretty confident its clean.

FTR yes, FO3 does also run fine on Windows 7 but it does need some tweaking.