I also have purchased Embird and have had nothing but trouble with it and vista windows. Finally after much ado.. I ran the compatibilty and got it downloaded, I have tried so many things I can't remember. I also downloaded it on my old computer with XP and it works fine so I am pretty sure it is a Vista problem. I contacted the Embird Team Lead Dusan Balara and he sent some generic answers that did not apply to me. I did get the program downloaded and it works EXCEPT for one part of it.. The icons do not show in my documents file where I save my embroidery designs. This is very annoying because I purchased the iconizer plug -in as well, and a window keeps coming up that it can't write to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT for some reason.. Dusan the embird lead told me what to do about that.. go into registry and the HKEY tree structure and delete a key that reads "persistent handler". There is no such key in that tree structure on my computer. So here I sit with no program with will work on my laptop the way it should and I am not sure of whose problem it is.. Embird or Vista. IS there anyone out there that has an idea. thanks.. greatly appreciated .