Microsoft Windows Vista, Multiple-Displays and Failure

In previous versions of windows you vould have various video cards mixed and matched for a multiple-display setup. This does not mean they were all running to full capacity however. The primary card would have its drivers loaded while any other card would just get loaded with generic drivers. This is good enough. Unless you want to use all three displays for gaming the un-accelerated screens will run Outlook and Excel just fine. Well leave it to Microsoft to innovate convenience out of a release. Vista can only load one video driver at a time. Not only that but the way it does it is per architecture. What this means is that all video cards have to be of the same family. An ATI card as primary cant run a nVIDIA card as its secondary and vice-versa. The reason why is really no surprise. Aero. The new interfaces dependence on Direct X is what is causing it. I learned this the hard way when I was unable to add more displays to a new system because the video card is not supported and had to buy 2 new video cards after the new one was also not working so I had to return it and go with another one that did have the correct architecture. This brings me back to video card is not supported being the worst possible error message for this situation. There's an old joke that applies to this: There was this helicopter pilot whose job was to ferry VIP's from Seattle airport to downtown. One day he found himself with a passenger in a pea soup fog somewhere over downtown Seattle. No landmarks were visible and the passenger became panicky. The pilot said "Don't worry" and very gradually let the helicopter down until it was hovering opposite the window of a large, unidentifiable building. The pilot motioned to a woman working in the building to roll down her window and asked her "Where are we?" The woman responded "You are in a helicopter." The pilot immediately lifted the helicopter above the building tops, flew a mile and a half, let it down through the fog, and hit the landing pad dead center. The amazed and relieved passenger said "How on earth did you do that?" The pilot said: "It was simple. The information the woman gave me was precisely correct and totally useless. I knew that she had to be working at Microsoft."