Glass effect problem in Beta 2

[Guest]

Hey Guys,

I installed beta 2 (5384.4) a few days ago and installation went through
without a hitch... no problems encountered as of yet.. the only thing that is
really bugging me is that I can't seem to get the glass effect to work. I
have a Nvidia Geforce Go 5200 video card, and Aero ran just fine with the
previous Vista builds (by the LDDM alpha drivers).

I've tried every single driver and forceware available:

88.61
87.45
87.15
75.03

I even installed the Nvidia driver through the Windows Update Server, still
didn't work.. although gave me a nvidia control panel.

None of them seem to turn the glass effect on, in this build. Even tried to
force it through the registry but no luck. And still trying to by-pass
activation.. I'll prolly uninstall it if I can't get the glass effect to work
in a few days.

P.S: Is anyone else finding that the "customize color scheme" section is
buggy? I cannot see the different glass colors nor do the "ok" and "cancel"
buttons work.

Cheers.

 

[Travis King]

I'm a little unsure about this, but I'll take a stab at it. Wait until
Zack, Andre, or one of the other people come around...
How did you obtain your copy of Vista? Are you a Technet or MSDN
subscriber? I know if you don't have a legitimate copy of Vista, it will at
least not let you use Aero Glass from various articles I've read. (At least
in the final version. I don't know about beta 2. They might have begun
this now.) So, I'm thinking that maybe it won't let you use glass because
you haven't activated. This is just a guess. If you activate, see if glass
will then work. By the way, I'm not pointing fingers and accusing you
because I don't know if you are a subscriber or not. I'm just saying that
this might be the problem. I know this was the case when I wanted to get
IE7 Beta 2 for XP and couldn't because I didn't activate my copy of Windows
XP. The reason why was because I had replaced my motherboard, CPU, and
video card (my hard drive also died right before this and I had to use my
secondary hard drive partition that was there for Vista to get me by.) and I
was only going to get a new hard drive in two weeks, (I installed XP on that
new hard drive) so there was no point in activating XP if I was going to
change my hard drive in two weeks. It's activated and fine now.

 

[Andre Da Costa [Extended64]]

Its possible that support has been dropped in BETA 2. Its strange though, it
was supported in prior versions but in BETA 2, but I had a similar issue
actually with my NIC in my Dell 840c, drivers for my 3Com 3C920 were
included by default in prior builds, but not 5381 and BETA 2. So, its
possible they are either working on new drivers or the next build will
include the updated drivers.
--
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Andre
Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta

 

[Andre Da Costa [Extended64]]

Well thats strange, I get AERO Glass even before I activate, so its not
related to activation. You also get a 13 or 14 day grace period before
activation, I activated mine after the 11th day, I still had Glass. I would
also try a reinstall to see if it fixes the problem. I would extract the
contents of the latest forceware drivers and update the display drivers
through Device Manager using the .inf file.
--
--
Andre
Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta

 

[Guest]

hmm strange why it wouldn't work in the newer builds.. but i guess that's
'beta' for you. Guess I'll just wait and see if a solution to this ever
comes up. Oh btw, my vista is activated as well.. has the geniune label on
it. Yea i was sure to that the problem might be because of the activation at
the time.. but after activating it.. there still wasn't any glass. I miss
the previous build :-(

 

[Guest]

yep did with almost every forceware.. used device manager like crazy.. lol.
Even re-installed vista to see if that would fix the problem.. but still no
luck. I would have thought the alpha drivers would do the job as they did in
the previous builds.. but even they didn't work.. strange stuff really.

 

[Andre Da Costa [Extended64]]

I guess you just have to send in feedback using the Feedback link on your
Vista desktop and also download the Reporting tool and send in a driver
request and report the current compatibility issue.
--
--
Andre
Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta

 

[Beta Groups]

I would disable any of your old apps from startup, you may be getting
"switching to compatibility mode" warnings that your not seeing before boot
or something like that.

Several programs i run such as Opera alwasys drop me back to the old
interface.

 

[Guest]

There could be a possibility that some program is conflicting with Aero but
even after a fresh installation it doesn't show up.. so I don't think there
is a problem there. However, I did look into msconfig and looked into the
Services section and saw that the Desktop Window Manager Session Manager has
a status displayed as stopped. I believe this service is in charge of Aero,
unless i'm mistaken. I'm not too sure how to get this service running as I
cannot do it from msconfig. Does anyone else have a similar status but has
Aero still working?

 

[Guest]

After 3 weeks of intense struggling and frustration.. I finally got Aero
working!!! WOOT! I didn't really think it would work as I stumbled onto
the solution. Anywhoo here's what I did,

I went to reinstall my video drivers and if you just click on "browse my
computer for software" then click on "let me pick from a list of device
drivers..." and you should see your standard VGA driver available and your
default Nvidia driver (if installed before) available. Click on the checkbox
that says "Show Compatible Hardware" and then you'll see a list of drivers
showing up. Just select the driver corresponding to your card, for me it was
FX Go5200...and make sure it has written (WDDM) beside it...otherwise as you
know its not going to work. Anywhoo, once you restart your computer, you
still won't see Aero. I do not know if it really makes a difference but,
once I restarted my pc I changed my resolution to 800x600 and then went into
Customize themes, and saw "Windows Aero" available as an option (which I did
not have before), so I selected that, and voila I got Aero! After I got it
enabled, I changed my resolution back to 1400x1050 and aero still worked
perfectly! With the new driver you will notice a couple of things if you
hadn't already. In dxdiag, your video memory would show as zero if the right
driver is not installed and as well as your Performance Test rating will be
low for your video card as a result. However once you select the right
driver, you will see dxdiag display the right video memory...and your
Peformance rating for your video card will go up. Well I hope this works for
the rest of you guys who are having trouble. I've posted some more details
about my video driver, just in case if you have the similar card. Let me
know if you find something unclear. Best of luck!

Cheers

Driver Date: 27/04/06
Driver Version: 6.14.10.8798

Driver details:

system32\DRIVERS\nvlddmkm.sys
system32\nvapi.dll
system32\nvd3dum.dll