Ok, so I wasted a good part of thanksgiving day trying to get vim working again on Vista. I am not sure what happened, but it went nuts. It may have been the recent windows updates or the face that I installed .NET 3.5, but it was unusable. None of the plugins/syntax highlighting/menus that I have grown to love. I need vim with Ruby/Python/Ctags/and a ton-o-plugins. So here is what I did:

Vim on Vista

Download and Install

Download and Install gvim71-2.exe (I used the one from hasno.info)

• changed the install dir to C:\vim to get around some odd things with UAC.
• I prefer to have my vimfiles in my home directory, so I choose that option from the installer.
  • I also recommend setting the hidden attribute on the vimfiles folder so it does not visually clutter up the my home directory (Right click -> properties -> General Tab -> Check Hidden).

Copy the following files into C:\vim\vim71\

• iconv.dll (from here You can find the dll file in the bin directory of the "libiconv-win32" archive.)
• libintl.dll (from here Get "intl.dll" from the bin directory in the gettext-win32 archive and store it as "libintl.dll" in the same directory as gvim.exe, overwriting the file that may already be there.)
• gvimext.dll (from here)

Configure around Vista

Here is the thing that stuck me for hours, if you had previously installed vim to the recommended location of C:\Program Files you won't be able to associate files with the new location until you edit the registry. Go to:

 HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\gvim.exe

Make sure the edit\command and open\command Keys have the following default value:

 C:\vim\vim71\gvim.exe "%1"

If you want the "Edit with vim" Shell Extension in Windows Explorer:

• Run C:\vim\vim71\install.exe
• Choose no when asked if you want to uninstall, then enter "d 14"

Trouble Shooting

Shell Extension

If you get a gvim not in your path error with the "Edit with vim" shell ext, make sure you do not have gvim.exe set to run as Administrator, as that will break it.

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