I'M OUT OF IDEAS

I'm new to RPG Maker games, so I don't know if my problems are due to unawareness, and if that's the case, I'm sorry to be bothering everyone. I've tried to look up the solutions to my problems, but I haven't found anything even remotely helpful.

The games I decided to download first were three games: Hero's Realm, A Blurred Line, and The Longing Ribbon. I unzipped the zips, and tried to run the exe for The Longing Ribbon. I was surprised when it didn't work and gave me an error: "Win32 Error. Code: 2". The readme file said that nothing needed to be done after unzipping, so I figured that the download was wrong for some reason, so I tried downloading it again, but only to have the same problem. I tried again in XP compatibility (I run Vista), but it still didn't work.

Similar problems happened to the other two games, although the error for A Blurred Line was about the RTP, and the error for Hero's Realm was just "RPG Advocate is cool."

I did a couple of Google searches, and learned about RTP's, so I downloaded and installed the RTP's for RPGm 2k, 2k3, and XV, but all the same things happened, although the error forA Blurred Line became "Harmony.dll not found".

So, I downloaded a harmony.dll file and put in System32. When that didn't work, I tried sticking it in the game folder, and when that didn't work, I facepalmed.

I surrender to the nagging voice in the back of my head telling me to pull over and ask for directions. So, guys and gals, what have I done wrong? Or are Vista and pre-RPG Maker VX games just totally incompatible?