ZanMura

Thanks, but I think it really is working now.

So:

1. Don't use steam. Get the actual client from the NCSoft website.
2. Install to other than default directory (being on C: according to some results on google may cause problems, in my case I'm unsure whether this was a part of the fix).
3. Make a backup.
4. Before activating, delete the original shortcuts and make one of your own. This would be the CohUpdater.eu.exe, same one used to copy the whole client in the first place, which you must copy into the installation directory.
5. Pray to God.

And yeah, that worked for me. Gotta say, been a while as in many years since the last game installation that was this troublesome. Almost had a frigging nervous breakdown not least because I couldn't even find any good results about this issue, as if I was the only one experiencing it. Had to copy 3 clients in the end to get this to work. Gg is all I can say about that.

So I now finally got the US thing from the sticky here. Apparently I had to DOWNLOAD the Update.eu file from the web, put that into the installation directory and try again.

But seeing how many problems I've had so far to get a simple OLD game running, I'm not really expecting this to be the last of my troubles.

I'll make the story short, as otherwise the frustration and rage from the 7 hours I've put into this now would get the best of me.

I bought the CoH/V through Steam. Downloaded it, didn't work. Steam offered some kind of Steam Error, Game cannot be played at this time. So I found a fix to activate Steam.exe as admin, worked for one day, not the next.

So I uninstalled CoH from Steam and got the European client. Couldn't use it, wanted to rename etc. So I got another client through google. Worked fine, except when I got into the game after downloading the whole thing, I couldn't log in. I surmised that must've been because I had the US client.

So I got back to the NCSOFT Account management site and got the European version, copied the Updater.eu thing to another location, put 'read only' and activated it as admin, got it to work, and the game started fine. Then after exiting once and starting again, the updater wanted to copy the whole game AGAIN.

So I did, then read that you need to make a backup in case that happens and overwrite the other files while deleting the checksum, so that way the updater will work.

From this point on, real short, I experimented for 2 hours this morning and nothing worked, and eventually when I DID get it by plain luck which I don't even understand to just verify the files I already had, apparently I AGAIN got the US version for some reason, since I can't log in to the game even though my account is active and well in the account management page.

So can SOMEONE tell me HOW CAN I GET THIS GAME TO WORK ON VISTA? PLEASE!? The installation and functionality of the game cannot POSSIBLY be this damned bugged up and [censored], so far I've had no problems with just about anything on my system.

Thank you. Meanwhile I'm waiting as my money has effectively gone down the drain and I'm pondering just how I'm able to contact the Finnish consumer rights board when I know full well the internet is basically a wild west where this kind of stuff happens daily.