MarsNova wrote:
I downloaded the game from the file planet world wide web site. I get this odd error. Any clue on how to clear this up? If not I will just uninstall and cancel as I dont have another PC to play the game and no sense in wasting 15 bucks a month. 
OK, not sure how this bug is Vista's fault, but everyone seems to like to beat up on Vista, so why not uh?
A suggestion for you to get a better Vista Experience.
DO NOT TURN OFF Aero/Glass, even though it 'is also' eye candy, it is also the final portion of the new WDDM Video subsystem in Vista, and runs things faster.
By turning off Aero/Glass you are killing 10-20% of your performance in Vista in general applicaitons. Oddly there are even a few games that run faster in a Window with Aero still on, as the shared texture multi-3D drawing of Vista (Aero & Game) can speed up older games as they write to the GPU since Vista handles this for them.
If you really hate the 'glass' look, turn off Transparency in the settings, but don't turn off Aero itself, and give yourself a few hours with it, you will actually start to notice how and why it speeds things up.
• Technically is a quick reason why it is faster •
1) Vector/Bitmap Composer - Aero on enables the DWM composer of Vista, caching extra paint messages and require applications to repaint themselves less as well. Also this gives you the tear free display so when Moving Windows around, background Windows don't have to repaint and 'tear' when repainting slowly.
2) GDI and WPF acceleration. Many of the GDI acceleration features that are part of Video Cards 2D modes are turned off and instead pushed through the 3D portion of the GPU. This gives GDI several advantages including performance, but with Aero turned off, basic application drawing in Vista is slower than XP unless you specifically load and use a XPDM instead of a WDDM. (XP driver vs Native Vista Driver for Video) With Aero on this increase is more intrinsic and handles more operations throug the GPU (ie. Fonts draw faster, lines, etc.) If you use an illustration program like AI or CorelDraw it can render the image faster because of the advantages of pushing some of the GDI/GDI+ functions through the 3D portion of the Video card.
3) Going along with #2, even loading, decoding, or using bitmaps Vista with Aero on can use functions of the 3D GPU, so even though you are just viewing a photo on the screen Vista can load and decode the bitmap faster by using 3D function instead of the older basic load Bitmap concepts. Pick a bitmap that is 200mb in size and Vista with Aero on, can not only load and decode it faster, but it will display virtually instantly. In contrast this is a couple second operation without these optimizations or if you are using XP.
Good luck, and hopefully in a couple of years people will like Vista for what it is instead of the FUD of the anti-MS crowd. Everyone hated XP when it was released as well, and then people started using it and liked the new features and realized it wasn't as bad as the press and 'experts' would say it was.