Moderator note: After this posting, Sony released an official upgrade that should work fine with Vista. You should try out the upgrade first before applying any kinds of hacks. It's available here.
As many of you know, trying to install under Vista results in the Reader install software freaking out and rolling back at the last second.
It seems, though, that the application itself will run if the correct files are present under Program Files.
So I have made a little package/installer for Vista people:
http://rapidshare.com/files/15002628...files.zip.html
1. Extract the ZIP to your desktop and run the Install_Reader file.
2. Plug in your Reader. I believe Vista has some built-in drivers as it didn't prompt me. If it does prompt you, point to the driver under \program files\sony\connect reader\data\drivers.
3. Drag the shortcut "Connect Reader" from the extracted zip file onto your desktop so you can run the reader software (or you could put it in Programs or whatever).
4. After the driver is installed, open the Reader software...it should work as usual.
NOTE: If your program files folder isn't under c:\program files, this won't work.
For the technically curious, here is how it works:
1. The zip contains all the files copied by the sony installer to a normal computer. I got these by doing an "administrative install" of the msi using "msiexec -a".
2. The batch file copies these files to a folder in the root of the c: drive.
3. Then a separate batch file (copyfiles.bat) is executed using the psexec utility; this utility gives the batch file system priviledges which allow it to put things in the Program Files folder. This batch file copies the files from the root directory folder earlier created into \program files\sony and program files\common.
I haven't tried this on other computers, but it *should* work. Let me know...