Enable Vista Aero On Non-WDDM Video Cards - Does It Work?
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Back on April 5, 2007 I wrote a piece about he Intel 915 Express Card and how it would not support Aero in Vista. [Story is here.]
So today I received a comment from reader Hubbak Khan who indicates there is a way to enable Aero on non-WDDM video cards. I personally have not tried this, since I do not have a system in which Aero does not function. So I thought I would pass this on and if anyone wished to try it, let us know how it works or doesn’t work.
Enable Aero Glass On NoN - WDDM Video Cards:-
By Hubbak Khan
If you have upgraded your >4 year old computer to Vista (versions with aero effects), this is disabled because your video card doesn’t pass the WDDM specs.
Here is how to enable those cool-looking Aero Effects:1. From the Start menu, click All Programs and then expand Accessories.
2. Right click on “Command Prompt” and click “Run as Administrator”.
3. Click on “Allow” from the Windows Security dialog.
4. In the Command Prompt window, type “regedit” (without the quotes) and press Enter.
5. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM (if this key doesn’t exist, create it)
6. Create a new DWORD (32-bit value) of UseMachineCheck, and set its value to 0.
7. Create a new DWORD (32-bit value) of Blur, and set its value to 0.
8. Create a new DWORD (32-bit value) of Animations, and set its value to 0.
9. from the Start Menu, Click “Run”
10. Type “cmd”, and click Ok
11. At the command prompt window, type “net stop uxsms” (without the quotes)
12. after that finishes, type “net start uxsms” (without the quotes)
13. Reboot
12. Goto Personalization in the Control Panel, Click on Window Color and Design
13. Apply Aero !!!!!!!
By Hubbak Khan
I haven’t tried this so be careful!
Comments welcome.
9 Comments
Ryan
June 29th, 2008
at 3:24am
The question is….why would you want it?
WDM is like the white trash cousin of Compiz Fusion, I was going around looking for something that would give my the desktop cube and all the other cool features you get with Compiz on most modern Linux systems (Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.) and the best I could come up with was all shareware.
The whole WDDM is worthless anyway, the drivers are about the same quality as they were before, just that they have to run in user space instead of kernel space now, and take a major performance penalty so that Microsoft can make sure you aren’t dumping you Blu Ray movie to a file on disc.
If anything, the mature and pretty much frozen Linux 2.6 driver API has meant that Nvidia and ATI have had 5 years to perfect their drivers for Linux 2.6, compared with a couple years for Vista and WDDM.
Another thing WDDM drivers do on Vista thats nasty is that they don’t let DOS applications go fullscreen, and you can laugh all you want, I still play some DOS games, and to get them fullscreen in Vista, you need XP drivers (Don’t recommend those if you don’t need them though).
Michael
July 2nd, 2008
at 1:33pm
the so called hack does not work. i followed it step by step and when i am supposed to apply aero all i see is basic windows standard and the high contrast ones. unless i went to the wrong place.
Eleanor
July 27th, 2008
at 8:33am
So…I tried it and not only didn’t it work but upon reboot I have no monitor! Now what?
Ron Schenone
July 27th, 2008
at 4:46pm
Press F-6 at boot. Get into safemode.
Remove the changes.
Reboot.
Sevan
July 28th, 2008
at 8:03pm
I’ve seen this method before, and it worked in the betas of Windows Vista. I have tried it in RTM, but not in Vista SP1.
Lukas
January 8th, 2009
at 2:14pm
Sorry but it doesnt work … no vista aero …
Josh Stokes
March 6th, 2009
at 9:44pm
Welp doesn’t work already knew how to do this but thought i’d try again since i reinstalled my vista 2009 black edition on this shity dell 4300 first gen. 1.4 ghz, 1g of ram with Radeon 9250 with only 16 mb of ram! can’t even do shit when it’s over clocked! i miss my tricked out emachine AMD Anthlon AM2 64×2 6400 3.2 ghz (2) 4 gig of ram
jeroen
June 7th, 2009
at 2:34am
doesn’t work i have tried it a couple of times, but no luck. Also i tried playing around with allot of drivers but also, nothing worked
Max
July 18th, 2009
at 12:23pm
I tried it and it worked but i only get the option to use it as a theme. when i click on it i changes the sound theme and the wallpaper but not aero glass. So i guess i doesn’t work