Comments on: Enable Vista Aero in Windows Vista Home Basic

By: ???

??? — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:58:37 +0000

it works! but no glass it gives you pre areo if ur computer came with it then it can have glass but its home basic so it cant have the real full thing just pre aero

By: meerkat

meerkat — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:05:27 +0000

I’m running Vista Home Basic on a PC and on two laptops. Here’s what I’ve found.
You don’t need to hack the registry to enable glass effect(not transparency) on any of my computers. It is available right out of the box. (right click desktop, select personalise, select windows colour and appearance, then select windows vista standard). This will give the coloured squares to select the colour of your windows. Click on the “windows classic clour…”blue writing to get the sliding bars for saturation etc.
I have checked the registry values an all of my machines, and they are all set to Composition 1, and Composition Policy 2. Therefore no need to go into the registry and change anything!
For transparent window borders, try Truetransparency. It’s a freeware download, and works well. For transparent windows, I use Glass2k. It’s also free and you can set the transparency of each individual window to your own taste. You can also set the transparency of the taskbar. For live taskbar thumbnails, I’m using Visual Task Tips. This is a neat little gadget that will open a live thumbnail of any open window, when you place your cursor over the window name in the taskbar. It also allows you to alter the size of the thumbnail. And for the 3D Flip effect, I’m using Winflip. Wich uses the same keys to operate as the Home Premium and Ulimate editions. All of these are free and have no adverse effects on my system. I can run them all at once with no problems. Hope this helps.

By: what?

what? — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:15:38 +0000

If you have a NVIDIA card, there will normally be a setting on your graphics control panel for transparency

By: RocketLauncher

RocketLauncher — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 22:46:10 +0000

I love reading the comments and seeing people beg for dear life because they couldn’t get it working.

By: ColdPwnage

ColdPwnage — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 15:06:02 +0000

O hai dere Leigh Kennedy. I just wanted to direct you to a few sites:

http://www.securemac.com/

They wouldn’t have a site monitoring Mac security if there were no holes.

http://www.macfixit.com/

Why do you need to fix a Mac if there are no flaws?

Oh, and also: There are viruses for Apple computers. They wouldn’t be able to sell antivirus software for Macs if there weren’t. Also, the only people who get viruses are people who download stuff from unsafe sites, anyway. I use Avast! Free and I had ONE banner inserter that one of my friends installed on my computer as a joke. Only because I left him alone with it for five minutes.

By: Andy

Andy — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:51:52 +0000

- Thanx – this is real super info – it’s a different world…
P.S. I can’t believe I bought Vista Business – having a Home Basic OEM (why I bought it was cause I couldn’t find the OEM one on a ‘Recovery CD’ apparently)

By: Rusdy

Rusdy — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:00:08 +0000

Well, it is very easy to actually do windows transparency in vista home basic. Try some theme in http://www.vista123.com. Download these theme : glass se7en final, or windows 7 narrow. With them you can get the real glass transparency like the other windows with aero. With windows 7 narrow theme, you get the transparency when the windows are not maximized (the default way of how transparency in vista work), while with glass se7en final theme, you get transparency in both, maximized or not maximized. I assume you know how to apply these theme, if not, the website tells you how, or just google it.

By: Young

Young — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:10:28 +0000

wait is this gonna mess up my laptop cuz then im gonna be killed

By: Caleb

Caleb — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:57:41 +0000

This does not work on Home Basic! However, there is a neat program I found that emulates Flip3d.

http://winflip.stylekings.de/

You might also want to check out this:
http://lee-soft.com/viglance/

By: Justin Deffendall

Justin Deffendall — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:49:56 +0000

Disregard the last comment I posted. Read this updated one.

Do exactly what he explains up there but on CompositionPolicy change the value to 2 and on Composition set the value to 1. Restart your computer. Open command prompt. Type net stop uxsms, press enter. Type net start uxsms, press enter. You should now have Aero. You will not have the ability to change how Aero looks easily but I’m sure there is a hack to do it. (btw my value for Composition was already at 1 so don’t freak out if your’s is too). Hope this helps.

By: Justin Deffendall

Justin Deffendall — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:28:19 +0000

Also, this hack doesnt give you the ability to edit how Aero looks easily. I’m sure you can do it but i haven’t found it yet.

By: Justin Deffendall

Justin Deffendall — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:24:56 +0000

Ok, so I’ve looked into this awhile and I’ve found something that works for me. Sorry, but it does involve the registry. Do exactly what he explains up there but on CompositionPolicy change the value to 2 and on Composition set the value to 1. Be safe, create a restore point by clicking Start, Control Panel, System and Maintenance, Backup and Restore Center, and then clicking create a restore point on the side bar. Restore points create a place for your computer to fall back onto if everything goes to hell. (btw my value for Composition was already at 1 so don’t freak out if your’s is too). Hope this helps.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 28 May 2009 01:37:37 +0000

Doesnt work HELP!!!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:04:37 +0000

found a cheap fix. if you have a .edu email address you can legit copies from microsoft at 90% off. I bout Visita Ultimate and Office Ultimate 2007 for $65 each. do a search on google for “microsoft ultimate steal”

By: kamani chetankumar

kamani chetankumar — Sat, 16 May 2009 18:41:38 +0000

if you want to use aero theme in your wista home basic,you install your graphic card or graphic file by your driver c.d.and then go following
reply:-kcdiku2@gmail.com

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:37:05 +0000

guy the trick worked for me, but in the personalization when i go to ” open classic appearance properties”
i get – windows Vista basic
-windows vista standard
with no windows vista aero.. but the standard gets me the windows task bar colors, but no glassy taskbar, flip 3d and the other options aero adds..

anyhelp on how i get those? or aero jst doesn’t FULLY work on vista basic

By: WeirdFrog

WeirdFrog — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:23:21 +0000

Also, I tried the registry thing and the top of the maximized windows are transparent but the switch between windows doesn’t work and the start menu isn’t transparent. I might have done something earlier to improve the performance that disabled those functions so any info would help.

By: WeirdFrog

WeirdFrog — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:38:42 +0000

Ok:
McLovin says:
January 10, 2009 at 2:37 pm

cyberjax, I’m not quite sure what do you want actually. Do you want your window’s interface to look transparent or just have the aero effect?(aero effect is just the glassy look on the taskbar, no transparent effect).
If you are going for the aero effect, the hack thingy should work. I don’t know other tricks. If you are going for transparent effect in Vista Home Basic, well, I used TuneUp Utilities 2009 software and SteelFlash 100K theme. Hope this helps. I’m ready to debrief more if this didn’t helped you enough though

I tried this and it actually works, but I couldn’t find the SteelFlash 100K theme anywhere, so I was just wondering where you found that but thanks a lot already!!!

By: aashish

aashish — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:06:43 +0000

how to locate dat key and that composite thing too……..

By: karan

karan — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:18:00 +0000

t 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. AND NOT 2

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.

Remember, this hack still requires you to have hardware capable of running Aero (in other words, a good graphics card), and don’t go to Microsoft expecting support if things go wrong.