Aero Window Panes sporadically available.

[squeeian]

(Ok, what state are you in now? I'm lost. It was hard to follow what you were doing in the video. When you disable DWM, the theme will go away and I don't know what will work at that point. Can you get to a desktop with Aero? Lets start there and work on one thing at a time.)

Hey Carwiz, I'm not sure what you mean exactly when you ask what state I'm in? I aplogies that it was hard to follow. The task bar windows appeared as just the text and the close button once I disabled the DWM. Though as I was trying to show in the video I am wanting to have them be the mini-windows that are a feature of Windows 7. To answer your other question, I can access a desktop with Aero working, but it's only available on the company's laptops. What information would you like me to find out from the laptop?

(Added:
When you got the screen below, did it fix it? What did the Details show?)

When I tried to do the Aero troubleshooter it did not fix the problem. Part of the issue that I tried to show in the video was that the troubleshooter was thinking that the DWM was disabled, but when you looked in Services it showed it as active. Then when you turned off and turned on the DWM it appeared to allow the mini-windows feature, but once you either clicked on show desktop or the Aero Windows 7 Theme in Personalization then it reverted back to what it had before, where all you would see is the name of the program and the close button when you rolled over it in the taskbar.

 

[carwiz]

What I saw in the video was that Troubleshooter found the problem, corrected it then you disabled DWM while Troubleshooter was still running.

Click the ORB (Start) and type Services in the Search box. Right click on Services.msc and select Run as administrator.
What does DWM show at this moment in Services (Services.msc)? Provide a "snip" of the screen area.

How are you logging onto the computer? The desktop can change with every user.

Start regedit and navigate to the following subkey: Do NOT change anything.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM

Take a snip of the Name and Value area.

 

[carwiz]

Also, Post a snip of your "default window theme" from the theme selection screen. It looks to me like a high contrast theme may have been selected.

 

[squeeian]

Hey Carwiz, sorry for not getting this to you sooner, we had a busy day. Here are the screen captions you asked for. Also I and the other user on this terminal are set as local admits. Oh, on the screen shot of the themes, the one that says that Aero is working was not correct. I mistakenly tried to save the setting of when I tried to recreate the thumbnail windows in themes. Didn't turn out the way I thought.

 

[squeeian]

Also on a side note, I re-ran the troubleshooter for Aero and I allowed it to close out because it thought it fixed the problem, however it still blacked out the background and allowed me to view the taskbar icons as window panes, but as soon as I went to personalization to click on the Wondows 7 Aero Theme, I losed the ability to view the window panes and it seems like the theme went back to being something akin to the windows 7 basic theme. Not sure if this information helps as well, but I thought it might.

 

[carwiz]

1. You must choose a desktop Theme from the Aero Group. (First image below)
2. It looks like you have software or a driver loaded that is taking over desktop Composition and it's overriding DWM's normal control of the glass and thumbnails. Some video control and games will do this. (Second image below)

 

[carwiz]

I found this Tutorial on DWM and it reminded me of the Group Policy setting (Option 5). You might check that to make sure Desktop Composition hasn't been disabled (disallowed) by a group policy. You can use Option 3 to set the Composition Policy and Group Policy at the same time for the machine rather than for each user.

 

[andrew129260]

@squeeian

Random question:

Do you use citrix in the company?
Do the computers all have the citrix web app plugin or active x control?

In my company we have determined it sometimes causes issues with visual effects not being able to be applied, or sometimes effects randomly turning off. We have reproduced it several times. Granted though, we dont let the user choose this option any more and make everything the old ugly classic look.

 

[squeeian]

Thank you Carwiz, I will check with the company about the compisition policy. To Andrew, Yes the company I am temping for does use citrix, I believe the desktops all have the active x plug-in, everyone that has a laptop usually has a WEI Score of 5.9 and are able to do all of the 3-D features in Windows 7. I will bring up this new information at our team huddle later today and thank you both for all of the help thus far. I would have been lost without your assistance.

 

[carwiz]

Sorry we had to bat this thing back and forth for so long.

 

[andrew129260]

Well, hopefully Carwiz or my suggestion is the answer that will solve this baffling issue.

 

[carwiz]

Yeah, thanks. It's hard for Aero not to work. When I saw the video of the windows flipping back to what looked like a classic or high contrast and troubleshooter trying to reactivate DWM, I knew something was interfering. That's why the request to see the Registry. Probably a look at MSinfo would have made some errant software stand out too. But thanks for the tip on Citrix.