Change color scheme to basic when gaming (Win7)...why?

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NathanP2007

[H]ard|Gawd
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Dec 17, 2007
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So you know that windows 7 color scheme change to basic (basically turning off Aero)? I dont get why sometimes that happens to me when gaming (sometimes on its own, usually its asks me in a pop up if i want to change it, cause my resources are low). But look at my sig...3770K, 16Gb RAM, 670 GTX...why cant my PC play a game and run Aero?
 
Yeah FEAR does this and a couple other older games. Guess it just doesnt work with the fancy new Aero coding or something. Not a big deal to me as it reverts back to Aero when I close the game but was a little curious as to why it did it.
 
Im talking like Batman AC and sometimes BF3. I have 2Gb of video RAM and Afterburner says my single 1080P screen only uses 1.5 of it.
 
Really? That is a little weird. Mine doesnt switch over with Batman AC and Im only rolling 1GB of VRAM at 1920x1080. Something else might be up.
 
NathanP2007 said:
Im talking like Batman AC and sometimes BF3. I have 2Gb of video RAM and Afterburner says my single 1080P screen only uses 1.5 of it.
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Is this something that suddenly started happening? Might be some kind of random software conflict that a new driver could clear up.
 
I get this all the time. No clue how to get rid of it :(
 
Hmmm, I have my Windows 7 theme set to Classic since I like it that way by default.
 
No not suddenly happening, it happened quite often with games on my old Q9550 69502Gb Rig as well.
 
This happens to me now and then. Sometimes I'll be playing BF3 and exit and it'll do it and I have to restart. Other times, I'll just be browsing the web and it'll change but after a few minutes go back to normal; quite strange. It's pretty rare though.
 
Azureth said:
This happens to me now and then. Sometimes I'll be playing BF3 and exit and it'll do it and I have to restart. Other times, I'll just be browsing the web and it'll change but after a few minutes go back to normal; quite strange. It's pretty rare though.
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Exactly my experience to the T. And also sometimes it turns back on (Aero) and other times i have to restart to get it back. Though last time when it didnt auto change back, i went into Professionalization and clicked on my Aero Background theme and it popped back.
 
NathanP2007 said:
Exactly my experience to the T. And also sometimes it turns back on (Aero) and other times i have to restart to get it back. Though last time when it didnt auto change back, i went into Professionalization and clicked on my Aero Background theme and it popped back.
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Similar experiences here, except my system is most prone after a fresh boot. While in game I will get the pop-up that will make my game minimize. Most times I have the option of keeping Aero on, but not always.

Once I take an action at the warning, it will not pop up again until my next restart. Most times. If I am not given the option I will have to go under Personalization to get Aero back as it will not automatically re-adopt that setting when I am done gaming. No idea why, but I have learned to live with it.
 
I manually set aero to turn off when I launch games. I like having every droplet of performance go to the single task that I am doing when gaming, which is only gaming. No need for pretty effects when I won't even need or notice them in game.
 
Protip: If a game is doing this go find it's .exe and right click on it -> Properties -> Compatibility -> Check Disable desktop composition.

You will no longer get this pop up. At least it works for BF3. If there was a way to permanently disable the pop up I forgot.
 
For all of you that are experiencing it, are you using multiple monitors? 2 or more monitors, eyefinity/NV surround, etc. ? I would be curious to see if running an eyefinity group of 3 monitors instead of 3 individual monitors (playing games on 1 screen only) fixes it...

I have experienced this on multiple machines, different motherboard and cpu's, AMD and Nvidia video cards with varying amounts of VRAM, different driver revisions for both, and across multiple games (especially BF3). The ONLY common thing in each case was my multiple monitor setup. I currently use 2 monitors, I game on one while I leave Win7 gadgets and overclocking software open on the other. I believe it has something to do with the video card drivers, but I'm not 100% certain.
 
I thought the default behaviour was for Aero to turn off when running 3D games in full screen since it uses hardware acceleration to achieve the newer Aero effects it helps performance (very slightly), with the exception of when you run multiple monitors in which case it will normally stay on.

It's generally down to compatibility, in fact if you right click an executable and select properties, and then select the compatibility tab, there's options to disable visual themes for the executable, it may be the case that some executables have compatibility options flagged when the game is installed, especially if it's installed by a 3rd party application such as steam or similar.

It does make me wonder if Nvidia and AMD can make changes to this behaviour in their drivers in order to maintain compatibility with older games on newer OS's, that's just a guess but would explain different behaviour for different people.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
For all of you that are experiencing it, are you using multiple monitors? 2 or more monitors, eyefinity/NV surround, etc. ? I would be curious to see if running an eyefinity group of 3 monitors instead of 3 individual monitors (playing games on 1 screen only) fixes it...

I have experienced this on multiple machines, different motherboard and cpu's, AMD and Nvidia video cards with varying amounts of VRAM, different driver revisions for both, and across multiple games (especially BF3). The ONLY common thing in each case was my multiple monitor setup. I currently use 2 monitors, I game on one while I leave Win7 gadgets and overclocking software open on the other. I believe it has something to do with the video card drivers, but I'm not 100% certain.
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Yes, forgot to mention I am running 2 monitors. I have a similar setup when gaming with the game on one, rainmeter on the other.

It did this for BFBC2 and some other titles as well. It only asks once, so once I have addressed it, it wont come up again until I restart. With the sleep function in Win 7, I dont restart as often as I use to.

I had generally attributed it to drivers and windows getting flustered with one monitor showing the game and the other the Aero desktop.
 
What people are describing sounds weird. Two monitors here: I get that popup once per OS installation, then I click the "fuck off and don't bother me again" button and it never turns off Aero again. I'm at work so I don't have a Win7 computer to check, but I suspect there might be a setting in the "Performance and Visual Settings" section of system settings?

edit: silly idea, but has everyone remembered to run Windows Experience Index? I know that it will change some settings if it detects a SSD when it's run, so maybe it will also auto-set some performance settings when run?
 
Kinda assumed its Aero crashing because of an overlay issue. Frankly I've been running windows 7 in Performance/Classic since inception.
 
NathanP2007 said:
So you know that windows 7 color scheme change to basic (basically turning off Aero)? I dont get why sometimes that happens to me when gaming (sometimes on its own, usually its asks me in a pop up if i want to change it, cause my resources are low). But look at my sig...3770K, 16Gb RAM, 670 GTX...why cant my PC play a game and run Aero?
Click to expand...
In the game shortcut, there is an option to 'disable desktop composition' which will disable Aero. This can free up around 50MB of GPU memory. When Vista came out, some games were designed to automatically disable Aero because GPU's had much less memory in 2006 than they do now. For any games that do this, you can check to see if this option is checked under the compatibility mode tab of the shortcut properties. You can also apply it to any game that you wish.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
For all of you that are experiencing it, are you using multiple monitors? 2 or more monitors, eyefinity/NV surround, etc. ? I would be curious to see if running an eyefinity group of 3 monitors instead of 3 individual monitors (playing games on 1 screen only) fixes it...

I have experienced this on multiple machines, different motherboard and cpu's, AMD and Nvidia video cards with varying amounts of VRAM, different driver revisions for both, and across multiple games (especially BF3). The ONLY common thing in each case was my multiple monitor setup. I currently use 2 monitors, I game on one while I leave Win7 gadgets and overclocking software open on the other. I believe it has something to do with the video card drivers, but I'm not 100% certain.
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Has nothing to do with Eyefinity here

piscian18 said:
Kinda assumed its Aero crashing because of an overlay issue. Frankly I've been running windows 7 in Performance/Classic since inception.
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Go to the game executable, right click, look on the compatibility tab, is "Disable desktop composition" checked? In every case I've seen this behavior that box was checked.
 
this happens to me too.. mostly randomly while playing battlefield 3.

doesnt really bother me when its off though to be honest
 
Master_of_Sparks said:
Protip: If a game is doing this go find it's .exe and right click on it -> Properties -> Compatibility -> Check Disable desktop composition.

You will no longer get this pop up. At least it works for BF3. If there was a way to permanently disable the pop up I forgot.
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This works for me. I think it is really the only solution at the moment.

CaptNumbNutz said:
For all of you that are experiencing it, are you using multiple monitors? 2 or more monitors, eyefinity/NV surround, etc. ? I would be curious to see if running an eyefinity group of 3 monitors instead of 3 individual monitors (playing games on 1 screen only) fixes it...

I have experienced this on multiple machines, different motherboard and cpu's, AMD and Nvidia video cards with varying amounts of VRAM, different driver revisions for both, and across multiple games (especially BF3). The ONLY common thing in each case was my multiple monitor setup. I currently use 2 monitors, I game on one while I leave Win7 gadgets and overclocking software open on the other. I believe it has something to do with the video card drivers, but I'm not 100% certain.
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This is very interesting and I would like to see more people follow up on it.

Here are my conditions:
Two monitors 1080p; Gaming on one and Windows on the other with a few desktop gadgets for CPU and GPU info.
Rainmeter running at all times with visuals on my gaming monitor.

Games that cause this:
BF3
Crysis 1 & 2
Metro 2033
Batman AC

I am not convinced that this is a VRAM issue because at times I would get the message as soon as the game is launched.
 
This thread cursed me. FEAR was the only game that switched off Aero until last night when I Alt/Tab'd out of Deus Ex: HR and yup, this popped up. I didn't turn off Aero cause DE runs well over 60 fps on my rig so I don't know why it was wanting to "improve performance".
 
I was told this had something to do with your memory? I have it so often with BF3 as well before I had to RMA some ram. I have 8gb now with 16 before so maybe getting more might help the rest of you?
 
Arken Elric said:
I was told this had something to do with your memory? I have it so often with BF3 as well before I had to RMA some ram. I have 8gb now with 16 before so maybe getting more might help the rest of you?
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This is quite possible. WDM copies what's in the VRAM into main system RAM, so if you're running lowish on that or have a small pagefile it might be triggering something withing Windows or the game. Vista would be much worse if this is true due to WDM 1.0 uses a lot more RAM that WDM 1.1.
 
Slava said:
I get this all the time. No clue how to get rid of it :(
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Happens all the time for me (the pop up requesting the change). Usually minimizes my game at horrible times. The "never ask again" setting never works.

I researched it and found that you can apparently set it in the options menu somewhere. I didn't see it there, but maybe it is only visible when the popup is present?

Go to your control panel and type "notification area icon" in the search box. You'll get a page where you can set your preferences. Go to Desktop Window Manager and select "hide notification and icon".
If a demanding program is being run windows will still change scheme and reset afterwards but it won't interrupt you anymore.
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And btw, those that say it's memory related .. I have 16 gigs and have always gotten it. It's just an annoying "feature".
 
I always thought it was to do with compatibility like someone already mentioned. The only games that do this to me are my older non dx10+ games due to lowering desktop color quality.
 
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