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Ocassionally aero effects crash. Is there a way to re-enable the effects in Windows 7 after a crash happens?

i.e. restarting a service or terminatating a process and letting it restart automaticially or manually loading it?

Problem symptoms; in

Control Panel \ Appearance and Personalization \ Personalization

The standard "Window Color" option is not available it just appears as "Basic"

Reboot will solve this issue, but would like to avoid that if possible.

Nick Josevski
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7 Answers7

159

Restart DWM with (by using a CMD shell window with Administrator permission):

net stop uxsms
net start uxsms

It's the same service that crashes and is also known as the Desktop Window Manager.

Bob
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BinaryMisfit
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10

"taskkill /f /im dwm.exe" always did it for me, though Diago's answer is cleaner. Killing the process should get the DWM's helper service to restart it pretty much right away.

Phoshi
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2

For me, when that happens I also have a wrong screen resolution. After I set it to the right resolution, in the Settings I can chose Aero as the Design again.

Pascalo
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1
  1. In Control Panel in search box type "aero"
  2. Click "Troubleshooting> Find fix problems with transparency and other visual effects"
Jens Erat
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Hashemi
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1

Force Enable Aero in Windows 7

  1. Click on Start and type regedit at run

  2. Now Navigate to the following registry key:

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM

  3. In the right details pane, create following Three DWORD (32-bit value) entry

UseMachineCheck, and set its value to 0.

Blur, and set its value to 0.

Animations, and set its value to 0.

  1. Close Regedit

  2. Click on Start and type CMD with administrative Priviliges

  3. Now type following command

Net Stop uxsms

Net Start uxsms

Above command will stop and start Desktop Window Manager Session Manager.

  1. Now you can turn on Aero by right clicking on the Desktop-> Personalize -> Select Windows Colors
thilina R
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0

The best answer doesn't work for my pc running Win7 32bit. A straight way I find is bringing up resolution adjust window, choose 'advanced', choose 'monitor', change the bottom combo box of 'color', normally this is set to 16bit so that Aero peek options is disabled. Change it back to '32bit' and aero peek is back.

Scott Chu
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0

Neither of the aforementioned ways made my Aero restart, but after looking at a microsoft help page -- which suggested checking if Aero is broken on another user account as well -- and logging into that other account, Aero worked on my "normal" account as well.

Cornelius
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