Aero Theme Missed from Vista Home Basic

Hi to all...

I have a very odd problem with my brother's laptop. He has a Compaq Presario C757LA. He has been running it with no issues for about a year, but today when he turn it on the laptop the disk checking utility started and deleted a bunch of corrupted files (or something). When finished, they entered to the desktop and discovered that the aero theme was no longer avaliable, and instead It has the Basic Theme.

The aero theme he usually had was this

Any suggestions? I already run the System Restore Utility, but It was unable to back to a previous point. After the restart System Restore shows a error:

Computer's system files and settings were not changed. An unspecified error
occured during System Restore.

Is it some sort of Virus or something?

 

most likely video driver has crashed/failed.

I bet device manager shows a generic video adapter. Try reinstalling the video driver for the laptop

 

Agree, sounds like a video driver problem.

I'm lazy to research it - what vido card have you got?

 

<s>Which basic theme?

Do you mean like the one from Windows 95?</s>

I take that back.. never realised that there was a difference between Vista Standard and Vista Basic.

 

Thanks for your answer. The Graphics card is an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100. I already went to the device manager and shows the correct driver installed.

 

hmm... I think there was something similar on my lappy once...

You did the obvious, restarting, changing power shemes?

If that doesn't work - just try reinstalling the driver once, that may (and hopefully does) solve it.

 

I think I misunderstood your use of the term BASIC theme. A picture of that would be useful.

That said, try this


Start -> Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> System

On the left side pane, under the Tasks, click Advanced System Settings.

Click Settings under Performance.

On the Visual Effects tab, choose adjust for best appearance and OK back to the desktop

 

Something else that comes to mind that I've heard before is a messed up WIndows Experience score for graphics...

 

Vista Home Basic Has a Standard UI:


But right now It has the BASIC Theme:

 

aero is not part of basic, you need premium to have it.

infact I think aero is the only difference between home basic and home premium.

 

"Microsoft decided that The Aero interface would not be available for Windows Vista Home Basic users. I personally dislike the new trend to offer several versions of a program with different functionality naming them basic, premium and ultimate. It confuses consumers who have enough troubles to work with the operating system less alone deciding which of the many versions of Windows Vista would suit their needs.

It is apparently not a big problem to enable the Vista Aero interface in Windows Vista Home Basic even though it is officially not included in that version. All you need to do is to change the values of two registry keys and restart Windows Vista afterwards. Open the registry by pressing Windows + R, typing regedit and hitting enter afterwards.

Navigate to the key Hkey_Current_User \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ DWM \ and change the value of the entry Composition to 1 and the value of CompositionPolicy to 0.

Now you can select the Aero interface by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Personalize from the menu. Switch to Colors and Appearance and click on Classic Appearance Properties.. and choose Windows Vista Aero from the menu."

http://www.ghacks.net/2007/05/13/enable-vista-aero-in-windows-vista-home-basic/

 

well i will suggest u do a windows repair from ur vista dvd
it has to be a premium or ultiamte though for aero to be in it.

 

I already did that, with no results. I Know There's no Aero for basic, I just want back the standard theme my brother already had on his Home Basic Install. It's like Aero, but with no transparency an the other effects.

 

actually, it is aero. it's not aero glass, but aero.

i had this on a hp laptop with vistabasic on it, too. never was able to get it working again after i lost it. now it runs vista business, as i had an unused licence lying around..

what i would love is, getting "aero" instead of "standard" when "aero glass" fails. i can't stand "standard" it looks just plain ugly.

this hasn't changed in win7 as well.. bad choise from microsoft.

 

we're talking about more than the background, right?

Download driversweeper and the newest driver for your display
Uninstall through control panel, boot into safe mode
Run driver sweeper
reboot into windows normal
install new driver

 

Thanks for your suggestion, I'll try that

 

Have you tried this Aero hack.

http://www.walkernews.net/2007/05/03/enable-windows-aero-interface-in-vista-home-basic/

 

Yes. No effect at all

 

Run WinSAT. Right-click computer, go to properties, click the thing on the right of Rating and Refresh.

 

use process explorer to isolate what process is consuming so much cpu

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

 

you all have to remember he is on vista basic. vista basic normally doesn't care at all about winsat for the aero glass performance, as it doesn't have aero glass. it does have aero (the theme), without glass and previews and all.

but i don't even find info from microsofts side about it sadly

 

Ok, thanks for all your help guys, but I tried everything and can't get back the aero theme. I'll have to do a system reset from the manufacturer recovery discs to bring back the initial setup.

Thanks again