How to make Windows 10 look like Windows Vista (sorta)

[qubit]

I think Vista was the best looking Windows OS, although the latest version of the square-edged Windows 10 interface is a close second, for me and in some ways better. Check out how to nearly get there.

Can you guess which bit of the Vista look isn't copied before you watch the video?

Make Windows 10 Look Like Windows Vista! - Full Tutorial

No sooner do I post this than I see a follow-up video.

Followup: Make Windows 10 Look EVEN MORE Like Windows Vista!

 

[freeagent]

Vista was awesome. Yes it took 10 years to install vs XP on hdd but I thought it was great. It took a lot of hate.. but I liked it. You did need top end hardware to make it run the way it was meant to be.. probably why many hated it.

 

[tabascosauz]

Vista was awesome. Yes it took 10 years to install vs XP on hdd but I thought it was great. It took a lot of hate.. but I liked it. You did need top end hardware to make it run the way it was meant to be.. probably why many hated it.

Personally? Vista was THE SHIT. Ran great on a mobile T7100 with 2GB RAM no SSD, I still have that CPU in a plastic holder. Maybe just through rose-colored glasses, because the alternative for many years was a Pentium 4 530 with 512MB of RAM on XP that screamed like a jet engine in its every waking moment. Have you ever played CS 1.6 at 2 fps, or seen the FPS counter stay at 0.1fps in crossfire? I have

7 might have traded the aesthetics for functionality but it always looked bland. I thought Vista looked great.

Then there's the general bugginess, but in all fairness, Win 10 isn't far behind with the way it handles updates. I wouldn't soil my comforting memories of Vista with the ugly monster that is 10

 

[Deleted member 202104]

Personally? Vista was THE SHIT. Ran great on a mobile T7100 with 2GB RAM no SSD, I still have that CPU in a plastic holder. Maybe just through rose-colored glasses, because the alternative for many years was a Pentium 4 530 with 512MB of RAM that screamed like a jet engine in its every waking moment. Have you ever played CS 1.6 at 2 fps, or seen the FPS counter stay at 0.1fps in crossfire? I have

7 might have traded the aesthetics for functionality but it always looked bland. I thought Vista looked great.

Then there's the general bugginess, but in all fairness, Win 10 isn't far behind with the way it handles updates. I wouldn't soil my comforting memories of Vista with the ugly monster that is 10

Agree with all of this.

I think I still have MB/RAM/CPU and video card from my Vista build. The video card's still under warranty too

I need to make the time to put it all together. Have a Vista ISO around here somewhere too.

**edit**

Yup, here it is

 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

i still think mac os 9 had the best os with best ui

 

[bobbybluz]

I was a beta tester for MS when they sent me a prerelease version of Vista. I got so frustrated with it I uninstalled it then threw the disc away. They sent me another newer beta a month or so later and it wouldn't install. I went to XP 64-bit and had much better luck with that (except GPU drivers). Finally around 10 years ago somebody at work needed Vista installed on a laptop. I found a Vista ESD, made an .iso then installed it along with all the updates and service packs. I was surprised at how well it worked! I still have that .iso somewhere but it's 32 bit and haven't had a need to use it again. It turned out the problem was with me not the OS.

 

[Atomic77]

Vista was a OS that was kinda forgotten over the years. as the newer OS'S were developed. I had a computer with vista on it along time ago. It was pretty awesome for its time.

 

[FireFox]

Tbh i never used/tested Vista, i don't even know how it looks like.

 

[londiste]

Shouldn't Aero theme itself be the main thing when trying to make W10 look like Vista?
This is what I really liked in Vista when it comes to visuals. While it has a slightly old-fashioned look today, it is IMHO a nice blend of XP-ish round and colorful and W7/W10s minimalist take on things.
3rd party variants of the theme seem to come and go but none have been reliable enough to actually use past some testing. More so with W10 Universal Apps

Vista was and is the base for newer Windows versions. It got a lot of flak at first, some deserved and some less so. Primarily - UAC was new to Windows and more annoying than it should have been. Minimum requirements (especially when it came to RAM and GPU) were compromised by OEMs wanting to sell machines Vista was never going to run well on. Plus of course the entire new driver model and resulting driver issues for many many devices. Some of the optimizations that came later were already added to Vista but it was too late for public opinion.

 

[Bill_Bright]

I also was a beta tester for MS and IMO, Vista was the worst OS MS ever put out. It easily convinced me to stick with XP on my primary systems until W7 came out. W8 was an ugly fiasco but at least under the hood, it was a good OS. While some may claim Windows Me was the worst, I never had problems with it.

Part of the problem with any OS is that it is doomed and destined for failure if the hardware industry refuses to step up and fully support it. While many companies did support Vista, it seemed half-hearted. That is, their support was nothing like they did XP. Not until W7 came out did the entire HW get in line.

But to each his own and since making W10 look like Vista is not the same thing as rolling back to the insecure, unsupported, obsolete, and superseded 20 year old OS, I'm okay with that. And while I prefer Start 10 to make W10 look and feel like W7, using Open Shell to make W10 look like Vista, while keeping the advanced security features of the modern OS, makes sense, if that is how your preferences go.

 

[Ruru]

Vista was the worst OS MS ever put out.

Vista was a masterpiece when comparing to Me which is the worst Windows ever. Even 98 SE felt stable when compared to Me.

 

[Mindweaver]

I was a beta tester for Longhorn. Wow... That was so many years ago.. haha

 

[qubit]

I also was a beta tester for MS and IMO, Vista was the worst OS MS ever put out.

At least it became solid once the major service packs came out, so it didn't remain a terrible OS. I remember the crashes pre sp1, but once sp1 came out it was much better and with sp2 it was pretty solid, if still a bit slow.

Part of the problem with any OS is that it is doomed and destined for failure if the hardware industry refuses to step up and fully support it. While many companies did support Vista, it seemed half-hearted. That is, their support was nothing like they did XP. Not until W7 came out did the entire HW get in line.

True dat. Try using XP now: it's a complete basket case lol and W7 is going that way, too.

 

[birdie]

In terms of visuals Vista has been the best looking OS by Microsoft but sometimes they went overboard with transparency and visual effects, which means at least for me Windows 7 is the best Windows release ever because it retained most of Vista visual features but it became more discreet and it didn't distract you from applications. I also loved Windows 2000 because it had its finesse. XP by default looked too flashy.

Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 have been absolute unmitigated 4bit (!) flat "touch-friendly" crap with atrocious fonts (MS developers disabled ClearType for most apps) as if we suddenly returned to the CGA monitors era (I'm almost sure absolute most TPU users have never seen them, lol) from 1985.

Vista was not received well because it didn't properly work with disk drives. Even today, on an SSD disk, it's slow as molasses. Microsoft fixed the issue only in Windows 7. Another big reason was that it required at the very least 1GB of RAM and proper support GPU support to work decently, while Windows XP before it worked fine with 256MB of RAM or less and a basic video adapter. The increase in system requirements was just too big for most computers to handle at the time. Funnily the 1GB RAM requirement (for the i686/x86 version) remained until Windows 10.

 

[neatfeatguy]

I moved to Vista about 6 months before Windows 7 launched. I never had a single problem with it and I stuck with Vista until support for it ended. I actually liked Vista. I know it had issues at the get go, but when you didn't have to work with Vista when it first launched you avoided a lot of the irritating issues which got resolved. Overall I thought the OS was pretty solid. Service packs and security updates didn't break things.

Maybe I'll look over the videos when I need something to do over the weekend and see if I can't make 10 look like Vista.

 

[freeagent]

I liked how durable it was compared to XP. 1 bluescreen could take out an XP install.. Vista was tough in comparison, and it looked pretty too. I thought it was ok.. pretty sure I beta tested it too. Shit I played with most of the Longhorn's on a celery 500 with 256mb ram in a fucking Barbie computer in 2003 or 4 lol.. I'm pretty sure I used the beta at some point.. I was into stuff like that at one time.

 

[Space Lynx]

I really liked the bubbles screensaver and the glossy overall look of Vista. I never owned Vista though, I had an XP laptop all through college in the dorms cause I was broke as crap back then.

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

I miss Aero Glass. That was stupid of MS to remove.

 

[freeagent]

I miss it too.

10 is pretty boring.

 

[erpguy53]

I miss Aero Glass. That was stupid of MS to remove.

I on the other hand won't miss aero glass

Vista was not received well because it didn't properly work with disk drives. Even today, on an SSD disk, it's slow as molasses. Microsoft fixed the issue only in Windows 7. Another big reason was that it required at the very least 1GB of RAM and proper support GPU support to work decently, while Windows XP before it worked fine with 256MB of RAM or less and a basic video adapter. The increase in system requirements was just too big for most computers to handle at the time. Funnily the 1GB RAM requirement (for the i686/x86 version) remained until Windows 10.

it's not just that, birdie.
Vista also did not work quite well with other hardware & there were other issues with Vista [especially with certain old Intel graphics hardware - ahh the "no WDDM Vista-like graphics driver problem for Intel GMA900" (Intel 915 series chipset)]
no WDDM driver = no Aero support

and the so-called "Vista capable" program by MS led to lawsuits as noted in this CW article and here as well.

 

[64K]

There were several issues with Vista when it first came out. Problems with the OS itself. Hardware manufacturers hadn't gotten the drivers properly ready for Vista. PC manufacturers weren't installing enough RAM for Vista. It needed significantly more RAM than XP to function properly. That was why people were saying Vista was a memory hog. The UAC annoyed a lot of people.

After a while most of the issues were addressed and Vista worked much better but it was too late for most people to want to adopt it. Most just stuck with XP until Windows 7 came out.