I’ve been researching possible causes and fixes for my issue with Aero Glass. That is, it doesn’t work and it should.

Synopsis: Aero Glass worked when I had one ATI Radeon X1600 (AGP 8x, 256MB) card and two monitors plugged in. My experience with the initial Windows Vista Beta (RTM, not SP1) led me to believe my combination of different ATI generations (and thus, different drivers) would cause my system to be unable to support Glass, or even worse, not have all the screens work. So I bought three of the exact same card: ATI Radeon X1650 (PCI Express x16, 512MB). It’s slightly newer than my old card.

My research indicates that to support Aero Glass, in addition to meeting all the requirements, I must have a Homogeneous Multi-Adapter Configuration. I Googled and Googled and finally came to this Microsoft article on that very topic. Amusingly enough, having blogged about it since, I’ve moved to the top of many relevant Google searches:

Vista SP1 Beta glass: 1 of 205,000 (Holy crap!)
“Windows Vista SP1″ Glass: 1 of 50,500
multimon glass: 1 of 33,500
Windows Vista SP1 beta multimon: 1 of 23,800
x1650 Aero Glass: 1 of 807
sp1 multimon: 1 of 640
homogeneous multi-adapter configuration: 1 of 48
Eight Feet of Glass on Vista: 2 of 890,000 (Sweet!)
aero multimon: 3 of 507
Aero Glass on SP1: 4 of 123,000 (Sweet!)
Glass Vista SP1: 5 of 274,000
“ati radeon x1650″ “aero glass”: 4 of 967
“Aero Glass” SP1: 4 of 53,900
Glass six monitors: 5 of 2,050,000

Unfortunately, my own blog entries don’t really help me a whole lot. I’ve read them; they just ramble on about my complaints. Maybe if Microsoft would send me a fix I’d blog it. *nudge*

ATI and Microsoft seem to agree this configuration should work flawlessly. I continue to pursue technical assistance through official routes via both companies. In the meantime, on the off chance that any of you out there happen to be running Aero Glass on six monitors on three ATI video cards on Windows Vista SP1, please let me know how you did it.