To be precise: Windows Aero is not available in Windows Vista Home Basic and Windows 7 Starter and only partially enabled in Windows 7 Home Basic.

But there is another problem that users can encounter when trying to get Windows Aero to work. Microsoft has build in a hardware check that performs a check of the operating system before enabling Aero. It will block Aero from being executed iIf the operating system fails that check. This can usually be attributed to not meeting one or multiple of the minimum hardware requirements to run Aero.

Aero Enabler has been created by the developer to enable Windows Aero in Windows Vista and Windows 7. It’s primary purpose is to enable Aero in Windows Vista Home Basic and Windows 7 Home Basic. It will only be enabled if the computer system passes the hardware check to ensure that the system will run stable even with Aero enabled.

The minimum requirements to run Windows Aero are:

• 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 GB of system memory
• DirectX 9 compatible graphics processor with a Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) driver, Pixel shader 2.0 in hardware, and a minimum of 128 MB of Video RAM
• 40 GB hard drive with 15 GB free space

The software comes with a switch to disable the hardware check which only makes sense if the hardware check failed although the hardware should be capable of running Windows Aero. Enabling Aero on a computer system that does not meet the requirements could result in all kinds of problems including performance and stability issues.

Windows 7 Home Basic and Windows Vista Home Basic users who want to give Aero Enabler a try can download the software at the developer’s website.. (via Techie Buzz)