My Aero Theme Shut Off And I Can't Turn It Back On

[SpikeDelight]

Hello,

My Aero theme somehow turned off one day and now I can't turn it back on. I
went to Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Personalization >
Window Color and Appearance, where there is usually a few pictures of
different colored squares and the option to turn off/on the transparency. I
tried to go there and turn transparency back on, and when I went there, there
is now a menu that says to choose my color scheme and has a list consisting
of: Windows Aero, Windows Vista Basic, Windows Standard, Windows Classic,
High Contrast White, High Contrast Black, and a few more. My first instinct
was to switch it to Windows Vista Aero (because it was set on Windows Vista
Basic), but it doesn't do anything and it still looks like Basic. Can
someone please help me with this problem? Thanks for your time.

 

[Seymour Newman]

When this happened to me, I could only get Aero back after a full reboot.

 

[Dave]

Some programs and some websites cause Vista to turn off Aero. When you
close these programs, it should turn back on.

 

[Seymour Newman]

Whatever program/web site did it to me, it did not come back at all. I also
tried to reset the desktop to AERO. However the option would not stick. I
rebooted and all was well. This was using SP1 Ultimate.

 

[Christopher Stott]

Hi Spike,

Your post wasn't as detailed as I would like so I am assuming here that Aero
is disabled from when you first boot up your PC. If is turns off after some
time then my post isn't really relevant.

This problem is most likely caused by software running in the background.
Disable all background tasks that you can (task manager/processes) and try
to switch to Aero (it may swich automatically at this point). If it doesn't
work then I can't suggest anything else.

If it works then you need to find out which software is causing it. You can
do this by going to system config (click start, and in search box type
"msconfig" and press enter) then click the startup tab and click "disable
all". Then click OK and restart the system. When you boot up, Aero should be
enabled, so you can re-enable the startup programs one at a time and reboot
until the problem comes back (unfortunately this involves a restart after
each startup program you enable, I don't know of any quicker way to do
this). That will tell you which program causes it. It is caused by the
software being incompatible with Aero and to my knowledge there is no work
around, so you can either live with it, or ditch the program and get a
replacement.

Hope this helps, good luck.

 

[JW]

Spike,
Can you turn Aero back on by going to your display
Personalize/properties/Theme and reselecting the Windows Vista Theme?