I've spent the last couple of days messing around with getting Visual Studio and SQL Server to work on my machine (which runs Vista Ultimate from the union). I think I've gotten it to work!

Visual Studio (2005, from the Union) installs ok, but to get it to work well on Vista, you have to download Visual Studio 2005 SP2 and a special Vista patch. Vista has a 'compatibility issues' checker inform you where to go to get those, so the install was relatively painless, even though it took over an hour to get it all done.

SQL Server was a bit trickier. I started by following the video you have posted the course web page, and afterward vista once again informed me I needed to install another service pack (SQL Server SP2) for it to work right - people need to make sure whether they are using 32-bit or 64-bit windows though so they know which patch to get (Vista Copies from the Union are all 32-bit). After doing that, I searched for the Query Analyzer that we normally use in labs, but that didn't exist; however, I found that using SQL Server Management Studio works. To login to our servers, I simply changed authentication to SQL Server Authentication and entered the given name/pass and it connected! It lists all the DBs on the server, but only gives me access to mine and a few others (like Northwind), but otherwise seems to work.

I thought that you might like to know at least someone got these two programs to work on Vista, so that if anyone asks you, you can tell them it's possible!