Tip : How to force Aero on "unsupported" graphics cards.

[newtekie1]

1. Open Registry Editor. Run -> Regedit
2. Navigate to the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM
   
3. If the DWM registry key is not found, right click on Windows and then select New -> Key to create new branch and name it as DWM.
   
4. In the right details pane, create a new DWORD (32-bit value) named UseMachineCheck, and set its value to 0. Note 1
5. In the right details pane, create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value named Blur, and set its value to 0. Note 2
6. In the right details pane, create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value named Animations, and set its value to 0. Note 2
7. Run the following commands in a Command Prompt or PowerShell with administrator privileges:
   net stop uxsms
   net start uxsms
   
8. Attempt to enable and apply Windows Aero in Windows. Restart the computer if required.

I recently installed Windows Server 2008 R2 on one of my servers with a 7300LE 64MB card installed. The graphics card does not have enough memory to officially enable Aero. However, this hack worked flawlessly, and Aero runs perfectly fine. This should work in Vista, Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, and Windows 7. I figured I'd share how to do it and hopefully someone else finds this useful.


NOTES:
1. This tells Windows to ignore the hardware check done to determine if the hardware can run Aero.

2. These steps are optional. They disable two features that drastically affect performance on weaker graphics cards, but show little visual improvement. I recommend doing these first, and if you feel you want them, try one at a time and see how your graphics card handles them. In my situation my graphics card was not able to do these with reasonable performance.

 

[Kreij]

Added "Tip" to the title, Newt, so people don't think it's a question.
Nice post. Thanks

 

[newtekie1]

Thanks Kreij.

Before anyone says not to do this because it will run like crap I will say that isn't necessarily the case. On some graphics cards that will be true, they just do not have enough horse power to run aero. However, there are a lot of cards that are powerful enough, like mine, that for whatever reason Windows won't allow Areo to run on. In my case, I'm certain it is because the card only has 64MB of RAM, which is really stupid to me since according to GPU-z only 24MB of VRAM is used with Aero enabled, and 15MB is used with Aero disabled, meaning Aero only uses 9MB of VRAM.

Considering this is a very weak 7300LE card, with only 64MB of RAM, that has been dremelled down to an x8 card so it will fit in a Poweredge SC420, which is running a 2.8GHz Celeron with only 2GB of RAM, I'm very happy to report that Aero runs rather smoothly. And this isn't just Aero basic, this is Aero with all the effects including Glass.

Now, don't get me wrong, it isn't 100% smooth like it is running on a more powerful machine, but for the hardware and graphics card it is smooth enough, and a million times better than being stuck with Windows Classic.

 

[KainXS]

I wish it worked on my old laptops 9600pro turbo lol

can't find vista drivers for it, thats the only problem I have

 

[Solaris17]

/sub