Solved Aero is Missing from my Themes

Hello

I have
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64 bit.
My Windows Experience is currently 4.0.
I have an ATI Radeon HD 3400 Series with up to date drivers.

When I first got this laptop, Aero was enabled. Somewhere along the way, it has disappeared from my options.

If I go to Personalize->Window Color and Appearance I get the old style
Appearance Settings dialog box pops up and I cannot check transparency

I cannot run a system restore as it does not go back far enough.

I am not running in power saving mode and the Desktop Window Manager Session Manager service is running.

Any thoughts on what I do next? Any help would be greatly appreciated, I'm so frustrated as I have been working on this practically all day.

Thanks,
Moretakitty

Hi Moretakitty,

First thing I would do is re run the WEI.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/220105-windows-experience-index-update-refresh-score.html?ltr=W

Right, I did run that right before I posted here and I went from 3.1 to 4.0.

I just ran it again for you and it's still 4.0.

Thanks though.

try to go to control panel>system>advance system settings>settings
and change to best appearance and then ok

Yes, you can check the option for best appearance like scorp200 suggested, or Let Windows Choose what's Best for my Computer (which is default setting for me), and see if all the boxes are checked.

Also, check to make sure you don't have your colors set to 16 bit, they should be set to 32 bit like in the screenshot.
And see if you have the Windows Aero option from the drop down menu in the classic appearance properties of Color and Appearance.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I was set to best appearance, and I was also running in 32 bit.

What did work in the end was following this post here.

Seems that there was a corrupted file.

Thanks anyway all!
Moretakitty

D'oh.

Should of mentioned that, it's one of the easiest things to run first to check for damaged/corrupted system files.

Glad you got it fixed.

You guys rock, thanks again.