Eh? Who told you the Editor doesn't work??

These forums do contain some fairly good mapping guides in the 'Community Maps' area, you should also check out the bfeditor site at:
http://www.bfeditor.org/forums/index.php?act=idx

It has some excellent guides and tutorials and will no doubt have guides on getting it to run for Vista and Win7. I myself use the bfeditor under windows 7 (which is similar to Vista being basically the same engine).

Been a while since I installed it, install BF2 first you then install the bfeditor after that as it installs to the bf2 directory. I think you may need to run the installer under compatability mode for Windows XP. If you need more help post on the forums or if you like you could join the First Strike XFire group and chat to me on there privately and I will try to help. http://www.xfire.com/communities/fscg/

My personal XFire name is TwigMortal, my username in the FS XFire group is Twigs.

If you have never used a game/mod editor before then I suggest you read and follow as many tutorials as you can. It's not as simple as merely placing objects around, terrain editing, texturing etc take a lot of time and thats just doing it for the original game. Trying to do it for a mod such as First Strike is a fairly complex and in depth process for a beginner.

Good luck!

Bite my shiny metal Tie Fighter!