Windows Aero not working properly

[Andarthiel]

Hi

I have Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit and yesterday it decided to revert to Windows basic after I launched a game and didn't go back to Aero after I quit. After a bit of digging around I managed to get the effects working again by restarting WDM and Themes services but I still get that horrible basic window colour and appearance in Firefox and other windows(ie. no colours, black and white lines, layout and font incorrect) so it's only done half the job. Looking up the personalization settings, it's telling me that Aero is on so I don't know why it still looks like that. Even the Aero trobleshooter isn't giving me any errors. I've attached an example of how Google looks at the moment(I don't even get so much as a logo).
Is there a way to fix it back to the way it was?

 

[Lemur]

Check your video card driver. Make sure it didn't revert to basic vga driver. Upgrade your video card. You have plenty of memory and a good card, so those are not issues.

If this fails, also look at your Device Manager to see if you have any yellow warnings with your card.

 

[Andarthiel]

It's not using the default VGA driver and my driver is up to date(258.96). I checked Device manager and there were no problems with it(no exclamation mark). I even tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers but that didn't help.

 

[Lemur]

Okay, let's restore the system to a date prior to when you launched the game.

 

[Andarthiel]

I ran System Restore but for some reason there was only one restore point after the Aero stopped working.

 

[Uber Philf]

Have you done anything to do with custom theme patchers?

I'll assume at this point uve restarted your PC several times.

Possibly something's corrupted..somehow.

Maybe a system scan will find something.

Open CMD as administrator and type "SFC /scannow" without quotes.

Post back the results.

 

[Andarthiel]

I haven't used any custom patchers. I use WindowBlinds 7 but I had for quite a while and Aero still worked with it.
Well I did the scan and it said that it didn't find any integrity violations which I guess means that it didn't find anything wrong with the system files.

 

[Gornot]

WindowBlinds is the culprit here. Just get rid of it, there are many third party themes you can use without having such a horrible piece of software on your PC. You can find themes on deviantART and most of them can work without making changes to the system files. As far as my knowledge goes, WindowBlinds doesn't rely on Aero but users produce their own "glass effects", that's probably the reason Aero doesn't work anymore.

 

[Andarthiel]

Thanks, Gornot.
That was the problem it seems. It's working now.
Even found an awesome theme on DA

 

[Uber Philf]

good good

 

[Gornot]

Glad to help. Again, I don't recommend changing system files like explorer.exe and another .dll

But there is a very neat little app called "Start Button Changer", if you haven't heard of it before, you should definitely give it a try, as it is very fast and effective.

Windows 7 Start Button Changer: Customize Windows 7 Start Button Easily and Quickly - Tweaking with Vishal

 

[Ralph1081]

Windows 7 Aero Problems

Hi.

I have recently installed Windows 7 on my pc. I downloaded all the needed drivers for my hardware, but all of a sudden my windows theme starts contantly changing. (look at the pics attached) The theme is the Windows 7 theme, but the top of all my windows that I open (Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, administrator permission window etc...) it looks like the standard windows theme and my desktop color changes to black. Do you have any suggestions on how to fix this? (and notice how the bottom right notification area is messed up)




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