Yeah I don't think the 5.1 Speech SDK is going to help on Vista.
I found this thread:
http://www.vistaheads.com/forums/mic...cognition.html
Where an MS guy states that:
The speech recognition capability is currently available in the following
language versions of Vista.
English (U.S.)
English (U.K.)
German (Germany)
French (France)
Spanish (Spain)
Japanese
Chinese (Traditional)
Chinese (Simplified)
So I would guess you are using a different language version, right? If so, another person asked the MS guy if there was a way to just use the English speech stuff in his foreign language Vista and he said he doesn't know how.
I just started a Vista machine and so, if you do Start and search for "Speech" (without pressing enter) you should see "Windows Speech Recognition" and "Speech Recognition Options". Clicking "Windows Speech Recognition" will start the recognizer and sh4speech should work. I'm guessing it won't start on your system due to an error, which the "Speech Recognition Options" and MS online help should guide you through fixing.