Help: Aero Stopped working

[Vulcan]

Hoping that someone can offer some advice on this.

Today, after running fine for 5 months, Aero quit working. I first noticed
that Flip 3D wasn't working, then noticed that none of the 3d features are
working. I tried all of the usual video settings to no avail. The colour
and appearance menu has defaulted to some pre-Vista dialog that only offers
Vista Basic (or less) choices. Here are some additional details:

Display is set to 32 bit
System has a Windows Experience Index base score of 5.1, including a
Aero score of 5.9.
Most recent video drivers have been installed
Uninstalled any software that I had installed over the last two months,
including rolling back all drivers
Like I said, it all worked fine for 5 months. I haven't installed
anything in a few weeks so I don't know why thing suddenly went south today.

I searched, and found lots of reference to this problem on the net, tried
all of the possible solutions - still nothing. If I had to guess what's
going on, some program that would not run in Aero mode switched to Vista
basic, and the OS didn't switch back. Is there a registry setting or
something that tells the system which mode to be in? Other than that, I'm
stumped.

Anyone else got a suggestion on how to get Aero back? Aero was the only
cool thing about Vista. Without Aero, it's back to XP for me.

 

[Pentium]

If it "stopped working today" - roll it back to yesterday, or 5 days ago,
and see if the corruption is still there'

 

[Lang Murphy]

Hoping that someone can offer some advice on this.

Today, after running fine for 5 months, Aero quit working. I first
noticed that Flip 3D wasn't working, then noticed that none of the 3d
features are working. I tried all of the usual video settings to no
avail. The colour and appearance menu has defaulted to some pre-Vista
dialog that only offers Vista Basic (or less) choices. Here are some
additional details:

Display is set to 32 bit
System has a Windows Experience Index base score of 5.1, including a
Aero score of 5.9.
Most recent video drivers have been installed
Uninstalled any software that I had installed over the last two months,
including rolling back all drivers
Like I said, it all worked fine for 5 months. I haven't installed
anything in a few weeks so I don't know why thing suddenly went south
today.

I searched, and found lots of reference to this problem on the net, tried
all of the possible solutions - still nothing. If I had to guess what's
going on, some program that would not run in Aero mode switched to Vista
basic, and the OS didn't switch back. Is there a registry setting or
something that tells the system which mode to be in? Other than that, I'm
stumped.

Anyone else got a suggestion on how to get Aero back? Aero was the only
cool thing about Vista. Without Aero, it's back to XP for me.

Well, if you've tried -all- possible solutions, why would you think someone
here would have a "secret" solution?

Have you tried this "solution" ? :

1.) Ensure that you have the following registry values set:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM\Composition set to 1 (32-bit DWORD)

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM\CompositionPolicy set to 2 (32-bit
DWORD)

2.) Restart DWM by opening a command prompt with administrative privileges :

- Type 'net stop uxsms'
- Then 'net start uxsms'

Lang

 

[Vulcan]

Tried this one, unfortunately - No luck
Guess I'm looking for an impossible solution - as long as it works

 

[Vulcan]

More details...

I found a good document on how aero works at:

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache...use&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=ca&client=firefox-a

Everything on my end checks out as per the document with the exception of
'WDDM' not being displayed in the driver string on the driver properties
dialog. However, when I examine the data store XML file after an experience
index update, the LDDM (which in this context is the same as WDDM) tag is
set to 1 indicating the driver is a WDDM driver. There's nothing on the
Nvidia notes about the driver update to indicate that it's not WDDM
compliant.

Another clue...

My system log regularly shows: "The Desktop Window Manager was unable to
start because a mirroring driver is in use". I have a feeling that this is
the root of my problem but I'm not sure I know what a "mirroring driver' is.
I'm assuming some application is causing this but when I've terminated
various applications, I haven't found anything yet.

Any suggestions?

 

[Vulcan]

Another update...

Even though the system event logs report that the Desktop Window Manager
failed to start, a check of running processes shows that it did indeed
start. Nothing makes any sense!

 

[Vulcan]

Another update:

I rolled back the video driver to a version that has "WDDM" in the driver
description string. Still no change - Aero still MIA!

 

[Lang Murphy]

Tried this one, unfortunately - No luck
Guess I'm looking for an impossible solution - as long as it works

Well... -something- occured that created this problem. Vista didn't "just"
decide to go south on you. If you didn't install ANY software, then I can
only assume the culprit is a Windows Update. Go check your update history to
see what updates were applied right before this issue raised it's ugly head.
Try rolling back the patches that look like they might be responsible for
your problem.

Lang

 

[Steven Rodriguez]

I am having the *exact* same problem as you. Did you find a solution?

See my post here:

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2502709&SiteID=17

 

[Andre Da Costa[ActiveWin]]

You might need to refresh your Windows Experience Index (WEI) rating.
1. Click Start
2. In the search box, type Performance Information and Tools, hit enter
3. Click the Update my score link
4. Click Continue on the User Account Control dialog

 

[Steven Rodriguez]

Tried that with no success, but thanks for the suggestion!

I have narrowed the problem down to this. I suspect that an application
disabled desktop composition, and when it was closed, Vista did not restore
Aero. I am assuming this to be the case, as when I look at my event viewer
upon bootup, it get an event id 9011 error stating that desktop composition
cant start because a "mirroring driver" is in use. There is no such driver
or program loaded, so I can only assume that this rogue application left an
artifact in the registry somewhere that is telling Vista that Aero cant be
turned on because this program is still running.

 

[Steven Rodriguez]

Solution found.

Uninstall Symantec pcAnywhere V12.1, which is supposedly Vista Certified.

As soon as I did that and rebooted, I got Aero back.

I found this to be the culprit by doing a search for the word "mirror" in
the registry, and found that pcAnywhere was loading a Mirror Driver.