Windows Vista contains several new security features that can cause problems with running CMUD on some systems.
Problems with DEP
If your Vista system has DEP (Data Execution Prevention) enabled, then you might have trouble running CMUD (and other software too). To see if DEP is enabled on your Vista system:
1) Press Win+R to open the Run dialog box.
2) Type "SystemPropertiesDataExecutionPrevention" (without the quotes) and press Enter.
3) Click Continue, if prompted by User Account Control.
4) Under Performance, click Settings.
5) In the Performance Options dialog box, click the Data Execution Prevention tab. If your processor supports this feature, a sentence to that effect appears in the lower part of the dialog box.
You can turn off DEP for user applications by selecting the option "Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only". Then click OK and close all of the dialog windows. Then you MUST REBOOT for this change to take effect.
After turning off DEP and rebooting, then try running CMUD to see if it works.
If CMUD works and you don't want to leave DEP turned off, you can go back into the DEP dialog and select the option: "Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select" and then click the Add button and add the CMUD.EXE program to the list of exceptions (and make sure there the checkbox next to CMUD.EXE gets checked). You'll again need to click OK and again need to Reboot to save the changes.
UAC and Permission problems
It is *very* important that you do *not* install any user-created data files within the Program Files directory when running under Vista. Vista doesn't allow user applications to write or change files in the Program Files directory. To support compatibility with Windows XP, Vista creates something called a "Virtual File Store". When a program attempts to write a file to "Program Files", the file is redirected to a "virtual" folder instead. When you view your Program Files directory in the Windows File Explorer, you will see a button in the toolbar called "Show compatible files". Click this button to see any files within the Virtual Filestore for that folder.
If you have files in the Virtual Filestore for your CMUD folder, that will cause problems with CMUD, and also problems with upgrading CMUD to newer versions. So you should delete the files in the Virtual Filestore of your CMUD directory.
By default, CMUD puts user-created data files in your "My Documents\My Games\CMUD" folder. This is the proper place to put user files on Vista, and the CMUD installer will try to prevent you from storing user files in the Program Files area.
If you are having trouble with your CMUD user files (such as sessions and packages) not saving, then you might have a file permission problem, or Vista UAC (User Account Control) problem. The easiest way to get around this is to just right-click on the CMUD.EXE icon and select Properties. Then go to the Compatibility tab and select "Always run as Administrator".
Windows Vista issues