How to Enable Windows Vista Aero After Clean Vista Install

Jan 30 2007, 2:00pm CST | by Shane McGlaun

Those of you out there who bought a copy of Windows Vista that offers the Aero interface last night or today will want to watch for something if you plan on doing a clean install (which you should). I was doing a clean install of Vista Business last night and noticed that Vista assumes your GPU really sucks when it first runs the little test to verify if you get to see the Aero goodies even if you have a good graphics card like the ATI X1950 Pro.

The reason for this is that there is no driver installed for the card after a clean install. This isn’t hard to fix, you simply download the drivers and install them and Vista readily recognized my X1950 Pro. The catch is that if you don’t know what you are looking at, which many first time Vista users don’t, you can overlook activating the Aero interface even though your graphics card and system can run the Aero interface.Aero is one of the cooler features of Vista and you will likely want to enable it, to do this follow the instructions below.

Right click on an empty portion of your Vista desktop.
Click personalize
Click Window Color and Appearance
Click the link at the bottom of the page that says “Open classic appearance properties for more color options”
On the scroll list for Color Scheme you will likely be defaulted to Windows Vista Basic after a clean install, choose Windows Aero from the list
Click apply
Click OK
Close the Personalize appearance and sounds dialog box

You should now have Aero loaded and can verify if you are able to see the background of your desktop through the borders of windows open on your desktop.

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Shane McGlaun
Leading our review center, Shane knows technology inside out. His extensive experience in testing computer hardware and consumer electronics enable him to effectively qualify new products and trends. If you want us review your product, please contact Shane.
Shane can be contacted directly at shane@i4u.com.