[{HVY-E}Jinxx]

OK guys, the problem was an SFS file I missed during the transfer via flash drive. I realized this from what Cirx wrote in another thread about the 5% crash, so THANK YOU Cirx!!!
If the sim is launching at 5% and THEN crashing that's not a Vista problem, it's a file problem.

I also found it is important to run il2setup.exe before you try to launch the sim in Vista.

Also...don't see any need at all to run Il2 outside of C:\Program Files in Vista as it works perfectly fine there. Overall, I like Vista a lot!

The problem you're going to run into with the game being in the default directory is that any changes you make to the conf.ini file (a system file as far as Vista is concerned) is that every time you close the game, Vista will revert the conf.ini back to it's original state before you changed it.

Putting the game in a totally different directory, or better yet drive, will completely alieviate the problem. It's also highly recommended to run the game in XP SP2 compatibility mode.

I've been running the game in Vista x64 for almost a year now and these were the only real problems I encountered.