Using Windows Vista in 2025: How usable is it?

INTRODUCTION: I like older electronics, usually from the range of late 1990's to late 2000's-early 2010's. About a year ago (maybe two, I don't remember) I upgraded my PC from a cheap $100 HP Compaq Elite 8300 SFF to a HP Pavilion Gaming Desktop (and then proceeded to upgrade it to 30GB of RAM and 2 TB or storage externally). Now I originally took out the hard drive with all my stuff on it and bought a cheap SATA III 3.5" 250GB HDD that I then downloaded Windows XP onto, and I did use it when I first set it up for a week straight because I had to redo my desk so I couldn't use my new HP computer, and I did get a lot done with it, but eventually I used it less and less to the point where for some reason it just... stopped working. It game me a missing files error of some kind I don't quite remember because I was just like "I'll just reinstall Windows XP onto it"... I then broke it again. This time because I partitioned the hard drive wrong. So now what? I downloaded FreeDOS onto it but the CD drivers didn't install so I didn't know how to load programs onto it, so I was out of ideas.

I then thought, "What about Windows Vista?". At this point I have only installed it onto a Gateway laptop only meant to run Windows 7 at least, and it didn't go well, it took two fays to get proper drivers and even then only a handful of software worked, so I just gave up and went to Windows 7 (and THEN that didn't work because I didn't install drivers correctly so I gave up and went to Windows XP and APPARENTLY THAT WORKED, so the laptop is on that now.)

Anyway... where was I... Oh! So I decided to install Windows Vista onto my old HP Compaq Elite 8300 SFF computer! Now, into the actual blog!


INSTALLATION: At first I remembered I had a random Windows Vista Home Premium install DVD I burned a couple months ago for the laptop and I did install it and decided to go for Snappy Driver Installer (SDI) immediately so that I can get the proper drivers, but when I tried to install the indexes, I got this bad exception error and it just wouldn't let me install anything, so I then thought that it might be that the system hasn't been updated, so I got Legacy Update (which I was planning to do after SDI) and it did install the updates, but SDI still didn't work. So I then just when to install the updates and there were 238 updates to install, so I let my computer run and it got places until about the last stage where it just froze and stood there for about 5 hours. I then just shut down the computer and restarted but then it got stuck on booting so I just gave up and decided to restart everything and install a better copy of Windows Vista I can trust.

I got a 16GB USB stick and proceeded to flash Windows Vista Ultimate (SP2 x64) onto the USB flash drive and at first it didn't work because apparently this computer only supports MBR BIOS and not UEFI, so I had to re-flash the USB, but after that it booted correctly and I successfully re-installed Windows Vista! So I then went to SDI to get the drives and it didn't work...

I decided to do what I should have done the first time and research the problem and apparently the problem was that my router was just not letting SDI connect to its servers, so I made a hotspot on my phone and tried again and it worked fine.

So now I have the proper drivers and internet, so I decided to get Chrome, which turned out to be a pain in the ass because the one from the official Chrome website just didn't work, and I ended up having to use Chrome version 49 from a installer I found on archive.org, but it installed and worked fine, so I am not complaining.


CONFIGURATION HELL: I started to configure Chrome to my liking, because I usually edit the search engine and how YouTube looks using V3 (VOARPIS) and StarTube. First thing I did was change the search engine to the 2010 version of Google (you can check it out for yourself here: https://oldgoogle.neocities.org/2010/ ) and it did work and looked nice, so I then moved to Youtube.

First thing is I want to explain what StarTube and V3 is: StarTube is a script addon to V3 that allows you to change the look of YouTube to any year between 2008-2021, and V3 is a YouTube customizer that allows you to customize YouTube to your liking and gives YouTube this 2013-2014 look.

Now I first went to install V3 and that worked fine and YouTube worked actually really good with it, no lag and wasn't slow to load at all when it came to videos. Now StarTube was a different beast. To install StarTube, since it's a script for V3, you need either Tampermonkey or ViolentMonkey (both Chrome extensions). Now neither of these will install on this old version of Chrome so I went scouring for older versions of the extensions, and dude, this is where hell comes in.

Each version I tried wouldn't work, if I loaded it in as a .crx file or as a unpacked extension, and trying to find the older versions of the extensions in the first place were already hard, since most places offering it were behind a paywall that I am not paying for. Finally I found a site with a archive of TamperMonkey versions and download SO MANY VERSIONS, I finally got TamperMonkey v4.5 to run. 

FINALLY I can install StarTube, so I installed the script and TamperMonkey did install it, but for some reason... StarTube just didn't work. V3 didn't show it in it's setting, and TamperMonkey was glitching not showing the icons and having weird text, and at this point I just realized that this isn't going to work, so I gave up and left Chrome where it is now.

I then downloaded something that, and I want to make this clear, is MUST HAVE FOR WINDOWS VISTA, YOU NEED THIS IF YOU WANT TO RUN VISTA IN THE MODERN DAY, and that thing is the Windows Vista Extended Kernel. Basically, for people that don't know, it's just a bunch of updated system files that allow you to run Windows 7, 8, and 10 software on Windows Vista. I installed this and thankfully didn't brick my system in the process and then proceeded to install stuff I'd feel like I'd use like Python, iTunes (v8), Notepad++, and I got two games: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Grand Theft Auto IV (I tried to get Garry's Mod and Source FilmMaker but both had various .dll errors I didn't feel like dealing with).

I also tried to install VxKex onto the system, which if you don't know is a program for Windows 7 that allows you to basically fake out a program into thinking you're on Windows 8.1, 10, or 11 so that it'll run on Windows 7, but it gave me a .dll error that, again, I did not feel like dealing with. You could probably get this to work if you have the extended kernel installed, and maybe I'll do it later, but for now I don't feel like wasting any more time like I already did trying to get StarTube to run.

HOW USABLE IS IT? (CONCLUSION): In my opinion, it depends on what you do when you're on the computer. For example: For me, I usually just animate, code, or watch YouTube videos if I am on my PC, and most of that I can achieve on Windows Vista with my current setup (except that for YouTube some videos just don't work, but it's not that bad). For something like basic video editing, coding (but it depends on the language and the version you're working with), animation (also depends on what you animate on), and even game making (again, depends on what you usually work with and what you're used to). The web browser(s) also are pretty useful and with some extensions and scripts most websites run good, hell I am literally writing this blog on Windows Vista in Chrome right now! 

When it comes to games, most games run on Windows Vista and with the extended kernel a ton on games can run on Windows Vista. I like a lot of Source games (Half-Life 2, Garry's Mod, Portal, etc.) and every single Source game is mostly guaranteed to run on Windows Vista, and mostly any game from the early 2010's down will run on Windows Vista fine.

To conclude everything, in short, is Windows Vista usable in 2025 (as of February 1st): YES!

Hello! So this was my first time writing a blog on SpaceHey, this took me 50 minutes to write and it's now 11pm where I am right now so I am kinda out of it and I want to add more but I am so tired so I am sorry if I didn't make myself clear with certain things but if anyone has questions or just wants to share their opinion I would love to read it!


IMAGES
Me writing this blog on Windows Vista: https://ibb.co/5W2RYbxj                                   YouTube on Windows Vista with V3: https://ibb.co/qY8n9pw6