Ok, I know that this wasn't an item that was mentioned in the patch notes, and I don't think it was even brought up as something that was being looked at for this build. However, since I happen to have multiple machines at home, one of which has Vista on it, I thought that I would take the time to d/l and test the new build on it to see how it would perform against the current one.

As some of you may know (at least the devs and those who run Vista), DR tends to have a bit a problem on Vista machines and usually needs to be ran in Window Mode. Otherwise it will crash every several minutes. (On my machine, with the current build - within 5 minutes, tops.)

I played the game on Vista in Fullscreen Mode with the new build, and...it ran! Yeah! However, (aaawwwwww! ) there were some issues where it seemed that the game lagged a bit. After testing my connection, DR on another computer, and DR in Window Mode on Vista it turns out that it was an issue with Fullscreen Mode on Vista.

What was happenning was that my character seemed to jump around a bit. Meaning, I would click on a spot for him to got to, or use my arrow keys to move him, and it would take a moment for him to move as if it were lag; but instead of running there he would "jump" there - as if the server had received the instruction but my computer was not receiving or processing it properly. This "jump" would not always be 1 single jump, either....sometimes it would be a "stutter" and sometimes it wold be a dash (quick run).

In Window Mode, the build ran perfectly fine. So, whatever coding changes have been made to the game so far in regards to the graphics seems to have increased the stability of the game in regards to Vista. (At least, on my machine.) It is not perfect yet, but it is a far cry better than crashing within 5 minutes of signing in!

I hope this information helps.

I am running vista ultimate, and have experianced only one problem with DR, and that is the refresh rate changing during portal transfers. Have not ran into an issue like you are discribing.
What kind of Nic card is in this system, do you have the latest and greatest drivers for both the graphics card and the nic. What speed is your internet connection? Do you have a firewall, router, or just using the windows firewall.
I have found with Vista, all or any of thses can affect online play, specificly hangs, jumps, sputters, etc.
I have been testing Vista since June of last year so I will try to help if I can

GW

My wife and I both have the exact same computers, Dell e521 machines running Vista Home Premium. The only difference between our machines is that she has a GeForce 7800 GS 512MB card while I have an ATI x700 256MB Card. Yes, she has the "better" card.

I ran into problems with Vista + my Nvidia 7800 card playing Counter-Strike. Smoke grenades would lag me to 5fps. I swapped video cards with my wife and now have the ATI x700 and it works fine with Counter-Strike.

I tried installing DR on my wife's computer (which now has the GeForce 7800, and it does close/crash every 1-5 minutes. No, I didn't try any windowed mode. I just gave up. Both machines have the latest video drivers.

Anyway, not complaining since my computer works well with DR, but thought my info might help others running vista.

Do you mean by the most updated drivers version 16.22 which is the WHQL driver or 163.11 or 163.44. 163.11 has major crash issues with it. the .44 seems a bit more stable, I also had a 7800GT when I first started using vista. Had major issues with just about every game I played.
Lastly, see if you can find these 2 vista updates. Microsoft released them last week and the fix a whole bunch of compatiblity issues with both hardware and games. They are:KB938919 and KB931175, you should search under the technet downloads to find them. Have reduced the number of crashs, etc since installing them. Hope this helps

GW

I'm running vista home premium and I have only had one problem. I had a video driver "crash" and I couldnt play DR but I could still access the test server instance. I updated the video card and it works fine now. Technically thats not a vista issue but it was wierd that my screen went black for awhile till I did a complete refresh and kicked out of 1024/856 or whatever the last number window is to a 800/600 resolution. After I updated the video driver it went back to 1024 resolution fine. Maybe if your experiencing problems it isnt vista but your video card/driver. I'm using a geforce 7300 but I got a friend who is giving me a 7800 soon so should be even better then. He got himself a monster graphics card that had over 512mb of memory and runs on directx 10 Personally I'd have waited till the price went down over 550 for a graphics card sounds a bit pricey.

Hey Jabber - Did you disable the BCDEdit (Windows Defender)? Did you also disable the Firewall / Virus thing? My Vista wouldn't run dungeon runners and would crash almost immediately after I signed in. I disabled / uninstalled those two and it worked soo perfect it's running fine on my 600 dollar vista home premium and it's great! Only time I lagged was when I was farming in Demonic Crypts for 4 levels...I just got bored of it soo quick otherwise i'd be 100 by now i'm sure ;P

BCDedit has nothing to do with defender. It actually the boot loader editer and storage for booting of Vista. Windows defender uses and interface program called msascui.exe and the rest is a service. There are many reasons for DR to crash, and you having to disable BCDedit, says that, that program does not even show up in my processes, let alone in my services listing.
I have to ask, what have you modified in vista to caust the BCDedit program to be running all the time?
I have defender running, BCDedit is not running, and Microtrends internet suite running as well, no issues other than refresh rate with DR at all.

GW