Forcing or Faking Aero (formerly Windows 7 resolution issues)

[AHadley]

Well, I just finished installing my nice new shiny copy of Windows 7 and I've discovered I have a problem. My screen resolution is locked at 640x480, and none of the options in Control Panel will change it. It says my hardware won't support the options... and yet before upgrading I was running at 1024x768 with no trouble at all. My colour depth locked to 16, when before 32-bit was no problem at all.

Research suggests a drivers issue, but W7 says all my drivers are up to date. Are there any other options or things I can do to try to fix it?

[TheJamsh]

Thats definately a graphics card driver issue if you ask me. My resolution sticks at 640x480 when i load in safe mode, and wont change.

I bet your card isnt supported or something... or you need a new driver (NOT a windows one).

[Nielk1]

I bet you plain old don't have a W7 driver for it.

[AHadley]

That's what I bet too, but Dell aren't offering W7 drivers yet.

[bigbadbogie]

You are running windows 7 on a computer with a max res of 1024x768? 

[AHadley]

I have a 12" wide monitor and I can't be bothered to hook up to the television every morning.

[AHadley]

I have corrected both my screen resolution and colour depth. All I had to do was reinstall the drivers for XP but in its compatibility mode. Simple, really.

I am now looking for some way of enabling (or faking) Windows Aero on a graphics card that Windows says does not support it. I've tried the registry patch and it didn't help.

[TheJamsh]

do you not think that putting windows 7 on this laptop was a waste of time yet ?

[AHadley]

It's my desktop. And it's got a performance score of 1.0 on a scale between 1.0 and 7.9. I know it's hoot, it's the one I keep moaning about.

[VSMIT]

By the way, Epic Win if you're a college student.

[AHadley]

I know

I've found lots of little applets that do exactly what I need. I've got glass, transparent taskbar, Aero Peek, and Windows Flip. That'll do for now... the tooltips aren't essential.

[Raven]

Thats kind of... shockingly bad.


Anyway, as far as faking Aero, the closest I think you can physically get would be:


Thats actually XP.

The window in the foreground is a replacement for explorer. However I don't use it, as although the titlebar looks like 7/vista - fully transparent (but no blur) - it lacks functionality, and even I'm not gonna use something that is barely of any use. They still did a good job though.
Background window is the native explorer (which I seem to have accidentally altered my toolbar on but can't be bothered to boot back into XP to fix it.)

I don't like Windows Sidebar, but it does actually have it.

The 'taskbar' or whatever they're calling it these days works like the one in 7; with the fade and grouped windows that you can select from hover or whatever.

Startbar is, as you can see, fully functional.

Easy stuff; mouse, sounds, boot & login screen

Oh, and it hasn't glitched; my mouse just happened to be over the maximise button...

The guys that made all of those little bits of software did a really good job, kudos to them, and thanks of course.

[Zero Angel]

What a convincing imitation of windows 7. The previous Win7 themes i've tried for XP didnt do such a good job. Of course Win7 is much different then just a look. It has a lot of handy features that are built into the OS and tastefully implimented.

[Nielk1]

One ascetic thing I absolutely HATE about both Vista and 7 is unless you go fugly classic, you HAVE TO have the damn programs open in the little start menu window and not expand across your screen.

[Zero Angel]

Oh yeah, that bothers me too. Though I like to use a program called launchy which makes using the start menu a thing of the past. In fact it remembers enough so all i have to do is press win+space to bring up launchy and type 1.2 or 1.3 or "for" and it will know that I mean "Battlezone 2 v 1.2" or "Forgotten Enemies" for example.

The launchy-type search of post-XP is pretty nice, but not as comprehensive as launchy.