Force "Basic" themes to use Vista WDDM?

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stop!theradio

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A little over a year ago I found a hack along with a visual style that makes Vista use it's advanced GUI features such as using the video card to buffer and display even "Basic" visual styles. If that made sense, lol. Basically, it allows Vista to use the same resources for basic styles as it does with Aero, equating to smooth window movement and effects for not only aero, but for basic themes as well.

The problem is - I can't find it. Does anyone know what I'm talking about and have a link?
 
Never heard of such a thing myself... and the Basic GUI simply has no need for GPU acceleration at all and even old video cards - like 7 years or older - can handle it without issues. The Basic GUI uses no more video power to work effectively than the XP GUI with everything enabled... it's basically the same. While it's true that some aspects of the GUI in Basic mode are assisted by the GPU (alpha-blending, etc), it just doesn't require a lot of horsepower to display.

I've had Vista and Windows 7 installed on something as lowly as a Matrox G400 (was super powerful when it was new 10 years ago but ain't so much now) and it handles the Basic GUI without breaking a sweat.

It's only when Aero is enabled does the GPU get involved...
 
I hear you, but the hack I was using got the video card involved in any and all themes, whether they were made to be used with the fancy effects or not. For example, I was able to use the maximize and minimize animation for Aero windows on regular visual styles that normally wouldn't support that, etc. I'm looking for that.
 
Well that would be a neat trick, certainly... but even doing some research just now I couldn't find anything even remotely similar to what you're describing.
 
I'm curious as to what the point oif this hack would be? If you seeing some issues with the Basic theme that you need resolved, I'd start looking at your video drivers. As Joe Average said, the Basic theme doesn't really have anything that would benefit from using the GPU.
 
This kind of goes along with my other thread - laggy scroll in Firefox 3. When I have aero enabled, window movement and resizing, minimizing/maximizing, etc is excellent, but scrolling is laggy. On the other hand, when I use the basic theme, scrolling is super smooth, but window movement s laggy, and also maximizing and minimizing is laggy, like it draws the window in an upward motion or something, like a "wipe" transition. This happens when I have all effects turned off.

Wierd. Any ideas? All drivers are fully updated.
 
I would look into why scrolling in FF is laggy with Aero enabled. Its not for me, and I'm sure many others. Do you have smooth scrolling turned on?
 
No, I never use smooth scrolling. They should rename that "slow scrolling" lol. I haven't had this problem on any other Vista systems I've had, it's just been this one so far. Odd.
 
Are you sure you are not thinking about how you can use the registry tweak to unlock Aero in Vista Basic?

Also, if you right click my computer/properties in the lower left click performance, then click adjust visual performance in upper left, then you can untick transparent glass. It still allows desktop composition (accelerated) with the basic look no glass.
 
I'm positive. It allows me to use non-WDM enabled themes with WDM. For example, say there's a theme I download from deviantART that's basic only, the tweak lets me use the theme, but with WDM enabled and with smooth window effects, the fancy minimize/maximize animation, the live thumbnails, etc. I found it in mid 07 and just remembered it today and I can't seem to find it anywhere.
 
I may be going off-tangent here, but could it be the web page that is causing the scrolling lag? What about a plug-in, like Flash? If Flash is missing, scrolling will be laggy on a page that uses Flash. Try the same pages in IE7 side by side with Firefox. If scrolling is okay in other applications, such as Excel, then it wouldn't have anything to do with the graphics.
 
DeaconFrost said:
I may be going off-tangent here, but could it be the web page that is causing the scrolling lag? What about a plug-in, like Flash? If Flash is missing, scrolling will be laggy on a page that uses Flash. Try the same pages in IE7 side by side with Firefox. If scrolling is okay in other applications, such as Excel, then it wouldn't have anything to do with the graphics.
Click to expand...

It's every page. I've uninstalled flash and ran the browser without it, but to no avail. I've tried separate browsers, IE and Opera, and the effect is the same. It's only when I'm running Aero that it's like that, but when I turn off Aero and switch to basic, other things lag (window resizing, maximizing, minimizing, etc), but the scrolling is now smooth. It seems that the mouse cursor is kind of "slow", too, as if it skips frames and doesn't scroll around the screen as smoothly as I'm used to.
 
stop!theradio said:
I'm positive. It allows me to use non-WDM enabled themes with WDM. For example, say there's a theme I download from deviantART that's basic only, the tweak lets me use the theme, but with WDM enabled and with smooth window effects, the fancy minimize/maximize animation, the live thumbnails, etc. I found it in mid 07 and just remembered it today and I can't seem to find it anywhere.
Click to expand...


In order to actually use third party themes, you have to hack (sorry, patch) UXTheme.dll to allow unsigned themes.

You're probably referring to Vista Glazz.
 
I'm well aware of how to replace the .dll to allow themes, I've been way past that for about 8 years now :p
 
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