Vista - windows requires digitally signed driver

I recently purchased a new pc that came with win vista 64 bit premium home installed. I am now reloading all my old programs and I keep getting “windows requires a digitally signed driver" error message. I also can't seem to play my old movie files, all of which played fine when I had Win XP. Apparently Vista does not want me to make my own decisions, so I am wondering how I might go about disabling all this extra secure vista crap. Can I go into Control panel and disable the BitLocker Drive Encryption? Or do I need uninstall 64bit and install the Vista 32 bit? Would that be a smooth transition? Would all my stuff work again if I had the less securitized 32bit Vista? Thanks for any help you may provide.
Regards,
William

Welcome to the Vista forums

1) You don't want to disable UAC (User Account Control) as it does a lot to protect your computer from various malware. If you really feel the urge to turn it off, then you can in control panel in the User Account section. Once turned off, you'll get the red shield in the bottom right saying it's disabled. Disable security warnings by opening security centre and going to "change how security centre warns me" or something and choose the "no warnings" option.

2) Just download the Vista codec pack (just Google it and you should find it) and DivX and you should have no problems watching videos.

3) You can install unsigned drivers on Vista 64 bit, do this by running an elevated command prompt (right click on command prompt in Start menu and click "run as administrator".

Type this and press enter bcdedit /set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS

When you reboot, you should be able to install unsigned drivers.


Also, I looked on the HP website for your computer, and it has 6GB RAM, so going to Vista 32bit would only allow you to use about 3.5GB RAM. I also saw it only has an Nvidia 6150e onboard graphic card. Are you using this? As if you upgraded this to a graphic card, you'd notice better performance on Vista as well.