List of Games not Working on Vista

As indicated above, there will always be someone who wades in and says that they have games on this list working on their Vista rig, but it will serve as an entering point:

Wiki List

as you know, vista is supposedly incompatible with a lot of games, here are a few steps

1. right click the icon for the game on the desktop and click properties

2. click compatibility

3. check run this program as administrator

4. click run this program in the compatilbility mode of Windows XP SP2

5. click apply and then okay

6. now you can run the game, it takes a couple times to get all the programs allowed through the firewall, and if you log in and it sticks at connecting, alt tab and see if there's a thing you need to allow, if so, allow it.

Hope this solves your problem

WoW hasnt worked on Vista.. which is like taking away my blood...Dan3721

dude.. WoW works on vista!!!!!

rule #1 of PC gaming: if it doesn't work on someone's computer, it will work on someone else's computer, even if their specs are identical.Hewkii

Exactly. For example no Punkbuster game doesn't want to work on my PC. Not even Call of Duty 4 online and it's brand new.

[QUOTE="Dan3721"]WoW hasnt worked on Vista.. which is like taking away my blood...skyyfox1

dude.. WoW works on vista!!!!!

Ya it does... I was just playing it like 1 minute ago...

so far every game i own works on vista.Lilgunney612

Same, the only one i had a slight problem with was UT2k4 so changed the compatibility mode and now works flawlessly

I've heard empire earth 3 doesn't work on vista.newyorkgiant

That's just Vista's bad game detection system.

Battlefield 1942 (+ Expansions) & Battlefield Vietnam. I can't adjust most of the settings and the targeting rectile doesn't show up for your main and secondary weapon.themovi3nut

as you know, vista is supposedly incompatible with a lot of games, here are a few steps

1. right click the icon for the game on the desktop and click properties

2. click compatibility

3. check run this program as administrator

4. click run this program in the compatilbility mode of Windows XP SP2

5. click apply and then okay

6. now you can run the game, it takes a couple times to get all the programs allowed through the firewall, and if you log in and it sticks at connecting, alt tab and see if there's a thing you need to allow, if so, allow it.

Hope this solves your problem

kaskus

This has worked for some of my games, but not all.

[QUOTE="themovi3nut"]Battlefield 1942 (+ Expansions) & Battlefield Vietnam. I can't adjust most of the settings and the targeting rectile doesn't show up for your main and secondary weapon.Popwar138

Those games actually work just fine, you just need to upgrade your drivers.

WoW hasnt worked on Vista.. which is like taking away my blood...Dan3721

I've been playing WoW on Vista since October of last year.

Like someone else said, because it doesn't work for you doesn't mean it doesn't work for someone else. Most of the games that I've played under Vista work fine. Everquest 2 is the main exception, but then I hear others saying it runs just fine for them. I haven't attempted to play many older games since installing Vista, though.

Prey won't load in Vista 32 for me.

Penumbra Overture Black Plague won't load either, I get a black screen

System Shock 2 will load to menu screen but won't play.

Age of Conan MMO beta hitches and drops big time FPS in Vista compared to XP. Granted it's a beta, but it will probably be just like every other game

Just about all my games run worse under Vista, especially when DX10 is enabled. Compared to XP there is considerable framerate drop in Vista for almost every game I own.

I would never recommend Vista over XP at this point, especially since XP you are almost guaranteed to have less problems. Aero is nice but it's hardly woth the poorer performance and compatibility problems.

The reason I'm asking is because I can't get any BiA games to work. I've tried everything.DiabeticDood

As you can see, you are getting responses all over the place. While the "just because it doesn't work for you doesn't mean it doesn't work for anyone else" perspective holds some water, the opposite is also true.

That all being said, you may want to try getting the game to load in a buddy's system that is also running Vista. I am recommending this based on your comment that you've tried everything. I am assuming that this means you have done everything that you know to do to eliminate Vista as the problem (download latest patch, latest video card drivers, done all of the Vista updates, run the game as admin, run the game in compatibility mode, hit the Ubisoft forums, etc.).

The only thing I can reckon is that it is now time to start troubleshooting things other than Vista? Try ensuring 3D or Hardware rendered sound is disabled, eliminate any firewalls running in the background, knock some apps out of your SYSTRAY, investigate whether or not BiA needs CPU affinity set when running on a dual-core system...not saying that these are the most likely culprits or will result in a Eureka moment; just suggesting trying some other things that may not have Vista as the core issue.

- Vr/GullverJR.

I have yet to have a single game NOT work on my new Windows Vista Home Premium (64-bit) machine. One thing that I have found it that the new "UAC" is screwing up some people's ability to install and run some games. Turning UAC off seems to fix most of that. As someone else said, drivers are also a major point of conflict if a game does not work. Make sure yours are up to date.

I was a bit fearful of adopting Vista as my new OS after all the horror stories. Now that that I have had it for a while I can say it is not nearly as bad as I had feared. It will just take a bit more time for it to catch on. Will it be as popular as XP? Only time will tell.

Concur...I've been bad-mouthing the heck out of Vista all year and just replaced my COMPAL IFL-90 (well, just subordinated, the IFL is sticking around for a while) with a GatewayFX laptop. In preps to sell the IFL-90, I slicked it and did a fresh install of Vista, and, voila, the thing works fine, now. None of the low power state issues I was having before, and no crashes to the desktop of games...yet. I already know that my blog is going to have to eat some serious crow. At this point I suspect that it was a poor install by the configurator. I did not load all of the apps and drivers that came on the restore DVDs, so maybe there was some type of goofy conflict with half-baked drivers that manifested itself in weird ways.

Point is, it may not be time to give up on Vista just yet, and it bears trying to troubleshoot some things other than the operating environment.

...and, Gruug, I am stealing your last line for a new discussion thread.

Hey GulliverJr.

I just picked up a Gateway too, I absolutely love this thing. I picked up the P-6860FX model, bought a T9300 Intel Core 2 (2,5ghz) from Newegg.com for $300, threw it in and it's running blazing fast and 10 degrees cooler than the stock processor thanks to the 45nm process. The 8800GTS card in these are phenomenal, not to mention the 4 gigs of ram and the 320gig hdd. Crysis runs outstanding in high settings too, which is the only game to worry about at this point.

I can't say I haven't had problems with Vista though. I had to reinstall Vista twice already. Besides having some games run poor or not at all, I had a bugged Network problem in Vista where it wouldn't let me share media, kept giving me errors, and the answer I got from MS support was, reformat, the usual. After that, I had another network problem where it wouldn't let me join a domain or change the domain name. I was told that Vista's network stack is a mess and is very flaky at this point. So now everything is working that I know of for now. Beyond that, I like the fact that Gateway gave us both Vista 32 and 64 on the disk, which is great to have. I really like the 64 bit version better, as it seems to run much faster than 32.

Good thing is, there's a second slot for another harddrive in this badboy, so I'm going to keep Vista 64 on one and add another HDD and put a XP/Linux install on that. I love the fact that we can use RAID as well, this is a PC Gamer's dream, all for about 1300+300 for the processor upgrade. I was looking at getting a Sager 5793, which are outstanding laptops for gaming, but being I already have a desktop for that, this was certainly the best choice for the money.

ever tried to play stalker on vista?pknyo

Yes, and works just fine. You just need the patches.

Hey GulliverJr.

I just picked up a Gateway too, I absolutely love this thing. I picked up the P-6860FX model, bought a T9300 Intel Core 2 (2,5ghz) from Newegg.com for $300, threw it in and it's running blazing fast and 10 degrees cooler than the stock processor thanks to the 45nm process. The 8800GTS card in these are phenomenal, not to mention the 4 gigs of ram and the 320gig hdd. Crysis runs outstanding in high settings too, which is the only game to worry about at this point.

I can't say I haven't had problems with Vista though. I had to reinstall Vista twice already. Besides having some games run poor or not at all, I had a bugged Network problem in Vista where it wouldn't let me share media, kept giving me errors, and the answer I got from MS support was, reformat, the usual. After that, I had another network problem where it wouldn't let me join a domain or change the domain name. I was told that Vista's network stack is a mess and is very flaky at this point. So now everything is working that I know of for now. Beyond that, I like the fact that Gateway gave us both Vista 32 and 64 on the disk, which is great to have. I really like the 64 bit version better, as it seems to run much faster than 32.

Good thing is, there's a second slot for another harddrive in this badboy, so I'm going to keep Vista 64 on one and add another HDD and put a XP/Linux install on that. I love the fact that we can use RAID as well, this is a PC Gamer's dream, all for about 1300+300 for the processor upgrade. I was looking at getting a Sager 5793, which are outstanding laptops for gaming, but being I already have a desktop for that, this was certainly the best choice for the money.

mismajor99

Cool beans, dude. I did not do the processor upgrade. My upgrade was to throw in a second 320GB Hard Drive into the Spare bay. Sorry to hear that you had some startup problems, but I agree...this laptop is a pretty good deal for the price.

- Vr/Gull.

The following games I tried didn't work.

Knights of the Old Republic

Metal Gear Solid

System Shock 2

Manhunt

However there have been reports that people got all of those games working on Vista. But the process might be somewhat overwhelming.