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A full 18 months after the commercial release of Vista, Microsoft is clearly still battling the perception that Vista is incompatible with various hardware and software packages.

The launch of the operating system was marred by reports of missing drivers for graphics cards, peripherals and various software packages.

In what seems a rather belated effort to address such problems, Microsoft yesterday launched the Microsoft Vista Compatibility Center<

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The site would theoretically allow users to check the Vista friendliness of various devices, including MP3 players, cameras, graphics cards and routers.

However, the site appears to be experiencing its own performance problems, with the site now showing a blank page with the simple message: "The Windows Vista Compatibility Center will be launching soon, please check back!"

That appears to be a rather creative spin on the site's woes, as yesterday evening the site was showing a message claiming "The Windows Vista Compatibility Center is currently unavailable."

It's not the first time in recent weeks that Microsoft's had problems launching a website.

The company started selling software directly from a new online store last month, but buyers were blocked from accessing it in Microsoft's own Internet Explorer because the site had an invalid security certificate.