How to allow users group to turn off Aero

stsaerox · 29 Sep 2011

Hi

I want to give the ability to the user group to turn off instantly aero (using either the right click or normal shortcuts described in the tutorials) without revealing my administrator pass to them

(or have to be there to type it

).

This also is a solution for x64 apps (That have grayed out these options in compability tab, it is a win 7 bug

) in occasion of my network with no expert users....

(If there is a solution, I will combine an x64 app with an turn off aero in a single shortcut

)

Sorry if this has been replied before... any answers will be apreciated:):):)

**cluberti** · 29 Sep 2011

I don't think you necessarily understand administration - either you manage the machines for the users (turning off things they don't want/use, changing application compatibility settings, etc, or you give them administrative privileges for managing their machine. Understanding how these things works might better help you understand why admin privs are required - to disable aero, you must be able to stop a service, unload a driver, stop a kernel-mode process, and then restart the video subsystem. None of these things would you ever want a non-administrator to be able to do in a managed setting. To set compatibility options for a process, you have to be able to write to a non-user-controlled portion of the registry, as well as add app-compat data to a protected location on the system (in this case, the Windows directory). Again, in a usual case, not something you'd give non-admins rights to do.

Hence, these things require admin privileges, so either you manage the machines, or they do - but someone's got to :). To get to the point though, the first real question to ask is, *why* do users need to do these things?

stsaerox · 30 Sep 2011

The systems in my network are capable of running dolphin emulator for wii. This application runs a lot faster with aero off (and less crashes).

Well a 32 bit app can be configured by an administrator to turn this off/on automatically by compability tab for all users that start this app(I thought it does not turn service off in this occasion, but the shortcut closes it only), but not a x64 app (microsoft says it would cause ram problems I think, that's why it does not allowed)
That's the part that may confuse to understand administration role for this.

My vaio laptop disables it also in battery and low energy power scheme.(Don't know really if I can do this in full performance scheme in my and other computers)

ANYWAY
What can I do instead?

**cluberti** · 30 Sep 2011

If you have access to the program in question, you can use the Application Compatibility Toolkit to build a shim (that then gets installed onto all computers you need to provide appcompat for the application on) to set compatibility options.

Aero runs on the GPU, whereas the old shell runs off of the CPU - in fact, unless you have a horribly inefficient graphics chipset, Aero and DirectX should be better on battery and slightly faster at rendering the desktop than the "old" shell using GDI for everything. Turning this off is counter-intuitive.

stsaerox · 30 Sep 2011

I hope that you mean this: Download Details - Microsoft Download Center - Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit

And I do not have much work to do :P

Thank you. I ll try this