I am sure you must have come across Microsoft Max and it is a shame that Max cannot run on a Vista at this point of time - I mean come on guys, you certainly can do better?

However, there is a work around (till Microsoft fixes this), if you want to get Max to run on Vista. The only downside is that you need to have a Win XP machine handy - which might be an issue for some people out there. Basically there are two things you need to do, to get this working on Vista - fudge the registry and use xcopy.

  1. Fudge the registry on Vista to fix the .Net 3.0 Setup registry key. To do so,
  • Go to \Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\v3.0
  • Look at the properties for System.ServiceModel.dll
  • Find the version of the binary (Details tab) (on Vista RC1 it should be 3.0.4324.17)
  • Open regedit 
  • Go to key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v3.0\Setup
  • Modify the Version value to match the one found for the System.ServiceModel.dll assembly above.
  1. Install Max on WinXP machine (with the correct dependencies, etc of course) and xcopy the Max bits to the Vista machine.