I'm on Windows. I noticed when I was installing the game that there is naturally no BladesofAvernumPrefs.dat file in my Data folder. I copied the one from my registered game over to the unregistered game and that didn't help. I tried reinstalling, and saw the same thing: there was no BladesofAvernumPrefs.dat file, even after I adjusted my preferences.
But Vogel sent me a new registration code, so I'm capable of running it now.
And yeah, Vista doesn't play well with BoA. I tried to unzip the editor, and my unzipping program told me it was encountering an error when creating the folder that the BoAE unzips into. I naturally assumed that it was all Vista's fault, and indeed it was. For anyone who may find this useful, you'd need to turn off "User Account Control" in the Control Panel to get rid of this problem.