

Gigabyte also offers a number of boards that include third-party USB 3.0 chipsets, which support Vista.

This motherboard in particular has Asmedia USB 3.0 controllers, and Asmedia has excellent driver support for Windows Vista. Almost all Sandy Bridge motherboards, except those with the Q65, Q67 or B65 chipsets, will support Ivy Bridge CPUs through a BIOS upgrade.Ī notable example of such a motherboard is the Asus P8Z68-V LX. To work around this, you will need to find a motherboard from the Sandy Bridge era that supports Sandy AND Ivy Bridge CPUs. With Ivy Bridge, Intel dropped Windows Vista (and XP) support from its USB 3.0 drivers, rendering XP/Vista support for the Ivy chipset incomplete. Intel HD 4000 Graphics drivers are also not so easy to obtain for Vista, so a link to them has been provided below.

I felt there was a need to create this guide, because although getting full driver support for Vista under Ivy Bridge IS possible, it requires you to use certain motherboard(s) from the Sandy Bridge era to get USB 3.0 driver support for Vista. As the title implies, this post serves as a guide for anyone potentially seeking to install and use Vista on the Intel Ivy Bridge platform.
