Windows Vista not working on Surface Pro 1

[Vistaar]

Thought maybe you or one of the other guys might be able to help out on this one.

I tried to help out the OP in post #2, but of course I appreciate all your assistance.

 

[Vistaar]

We’ve reached page 2 without solving anything? Perhaps Imacri could compose an essay?

 

[wither 3]

S1W2 seems to be the expert on installations. I'm not sure why the OP wants to install Vista since he can install Win 7. I like Vista but Win 7 is 60% Vista.

 

[Vistaar]

There’s just not enough OCD at this forum. The real nuts are at MSFN, where the OP has been given instructions on how to modify a driver so that it will hopefully work on a legacy OS. I’m not sure why a hacked driver is preferable to a legacy driver, but we’ll see what happens.

 

[wither 3]

Good one. I'd have to look again, but there's a way within Win 10 to set the BIOS to Legacy mode. It might help solve his problem but I don't know what would happen to Vista when the BIOS was set back to UEFI for Win 10.

 

[Vistaar]

Vista was working: OP just didn’t have any graphics. I still think this was most likely due to an incompatible graphics driver. OP already told you, “The Surface Pro 1 is a UEFI-only device” and “doesn’t have a legacy setting.” I don’t think he’s a novice. Please don’t continue posting on my account: I am no longer interested in this thread.

 

[wither 3]

Okay. One down. Now, maybe someone else will respond.

 

[Kharis Kurian]

I was able to fix the problem. I tried a clean install of Server 2008 and it worked, all I needed to do was enable Narrator and change resolution. The screen then worked. I will be trying the same thing with regular Vista, which I expect to work. I plan to post a guide on how to install Vista on the Surface Pro 1, then move on to installing XP and maybe ReactOS if I can get XP working.