Windows 7 - Windows 7 Home Premium basic theme is slow but aero theme is fast?

Hi all,

For the past few days, if not a week now, I've noticed that when I switch to Basic theme for RAM intesive programs like Adobe After Effects, Windows is quite slow, almost running as though my laptop is 1GB not 2GB RAM.
Though when I switch to Aero theme, Windows is only slightly slower with Adobe After Effects running.

My laptop is Compaq Presario CQ56, 2GB shared graphics and I can't explain why the Basic theme is running slow whereas Aero is responding faster, so much so, programs tend to stop responding more frequently on Basic.

I have run MSE, MBAM and SAS (MSE realtime, others are standalone mode) and found no viruses and I update them all either daily or every two days.

I only have Realtek Audio and MSE on Startup so I can't figure out why this happening!

Thanks in advance for any insight as to what's happened/happening

How much dedicated video memory does the laptop have?
It's conceivably possible that you are actually dumping more onto the system reserved ram by turning it off If the configuration is sharing ram with your video card anyway.

Running Aero Basic is slow because it is running on CPU for everything. Where as Aero is running on your GPU for almost everything, the old GDI stuff still goes to the CPU most of it. Is there an actual reason you are turning Aero off when running After Effects?

But yes, Aero Basic/Classic runs on the CPU and system RAM.
Aero runs on the GPU and lives in video memory exclusively (with WDDM 1.1 drivers).