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You shouldn't expect windows XP programs to work on Vista.
Whether Vista is crap or not is a totally different issue and it is not why some people didn't like Vista.
Even Linus Torvalds said that people don't like change and the only reason some folks didn't like Vista is that it is different from XP.

I haven't touched windows since 2004. But I don't imagine that Vista is that terrible or worse than XP.

It's like XP, just slower and there's a million versions of it with different installation keys as the only difference.

What is different in Vista compared to XP, is that it uses resources of two XP installations and offers a GUI which is about as much behind the others as XP's Luna was on its debut. I had no serious trouble in finding anything I wanted, only "optimizations" caused problems, since I didn't know (nor could imagine) that disabling one service might break up ten other pretty fundamental services.

I've seen many times a "Vista noob" joining a (IRC) channel and asking how to change his background picture, tune graphics card settings or see network adapter information, etc. in Vista, and then "Vista pros" telling him it happens "just the same way like in XP".

Vista is a technical marvel and a commercial failure. Most people who hate it, don't use it. People who use it and hate it, can't appreciate the breaking changes on it.

The problem is the fact that they knew that reliability and compatible had to be compromised to make atleast some marginal progress forward in Windows (security etc). If they knew that they could promise compatibility - why didn't they just admit that things might go pear shape, include a free copy of Virtual PC along with Windows XP in the form of a bootable image - and be done with it.

The problem isn't the break of compatibility, but the push by them that some how they can move forward without breaking things along the way - and claiming that everything will be right. They should have been more honest, and I'll tell you, sure, the adoption might not have been great, but atleast customers *knew* things could go wrong, and they weren't given the false impression that it was a smooth transition.

Edited 2008-04-05 13:20 UTC

You must have missed Windows ME then, lucky you. Vista works, just badly.