Vista Tutorial - The Aero Theme Won't Activate...

Hi there, since about... 4 days I've switched from XP to Home Premium 32bit and I must say I'm very proud.

Anyways I went to the microsoft site and saw the key combo "start+tab" that makes the cool "Flip 3D" effect, but today I started up my PC and the "Experiance Index" showed up unrated. And with that my Aero was gone. No more glass FX no more nothing. It's all lost.

I pressed the "Refresh" button ontop of the "Experiance Index" windows and even if the scan finishes, I'm still left unrated.

With that I can't activate the Aero, because even clicking on the theme and pressing OK leaves it with the basic theme...

There is no way I can rate my experiance, because I have some devices with drivers that CAN'T run on vista, and the installed drivers must be put into compatibility mode for XP SP2...

Anyway, that shouldn't be the problem, I have a plugged in camera too, but It didn't seem to bother the experiance index when I plugged it in...

Anyways, the drivers of my printer (that don't run on vista) aren't working so well even in compatibility mode, so I may uninstall them, I have other Print & Scan programs that work on vista, but If i uninstall the drivers will it work?

P.S.
I also tried to unplug all the devices that don't have a driver yet, and refreshed the index but no effect-it's still a stupid Black & White icon that says 1.0....

Please help because I really want my Aero back

Experience Index only rates your CPU, RAM, GPU & HDD.

Try installing the latest drivers for your GPU, since that's what Aero needs.

And if that doesn't work, try to fall back to the time it was working with System Restore.

Yes, I will try the GPU, but I'm a newbie, please tell me how?
[Does it have anything to do with Device Manager ?]

No problem man, we'll help you out .

Do you have a nVIDIA or an ATi Video Card?

Yes I'm on an ATI, but BTW, I "investigated" the .xml files in
C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT\DataStore
...and there is something stupid I found:


To me DX9 means DirectX...
So now I'm downloading the new DirectX10 (yes, 10, not 9) that fully supports all the Vista's, I even downloaded it from the Microsoft site with all the genuine codes & stuff to ENSURE that it ain't no foolin' around...

I belive that this will fix all the stuff in the System Rating...
(DOH, that's why Gaming Experiance and Graphics Experiance WAS LOWERED TO 1.0)

Edit:
I can't beleive I made such a fool of myself
I forgot the DirectX OMFG!!!

I don't think you can download DX10, because that's standard included in Vista.
I think you're downloading DX9.

OK, bad news-the DirectX doesen't work !!!
Look:


And look, the GPU you told me about:

Got exactly the same problem two weeks ago on my laptop. Suddenly, the Aero
desktop has gone. The problem was an automatic driver update which did not
complete correctly.
If you use a driver which fails in any way to identificate successfully as a
WDDM-compatible graphics driver, Vista thinks, that there is no capability
to display Aero.
Installing the newest official version of the Catalyst driver definetly
solves the problem. It complies with Aero (I assume your graphics card is
able to display Aero content) and it does NO automatic update like some
unofficial ones.

OK. That's all the technical stuff. You say you are a newbie - so I will
tell you what to do to get it work in a simple way ;-)

1. Go to www.ati.com - Download newest Catalyst drivers
2. Uninstall your old drivers (Control Panel/Software/Ati Display Drivers -
if there is no such entry, skip this step)
3. Install the downloaded drivers, reboot and redo the performance
evaluation
4. If all went good - the score for your graphics card should now be around
2.0 (ATi Radeon 9600 - got that from your second screenshot -> chipset
RV350)
5. If your score is still at 1.0, you may think about reinstalling your
system because a non-WDDM-driver may still be present in Windows
6. If your score is slightly above 1.0 but Aero still doesn't work - you
should think about getting a new graphics card (Radeon 9600 is the ultimate
minimum to run Aero - so if you actually enjoy glass, you should get a
better one)

Feel free to write back if there is any further problem ;-)

"rock_lee_96" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:923481a6605bd00258fcf15b8f5cce45@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

WOW OMG Thanks xYrus !!!
The aero works great, and I got my Flip3D effect and glass windows effect back!
Thanks a lot

Fine that I could help you :-)

"rock_lee_96" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:78604b131eea34e06a3b78e77e642e9e@xxxxxx-gateway.com...