glass effect beta 2

Hey Guys,
I installed beta 2 (5384.4) a few days ago and installation went through without a hitch... no problems encountered as of yet.. the only thing that is really bugging me is that I can't seem to get the glass effect to work. I have a Nvidia Geforce Go 5200 video card, and Aero ran just fine with the previous Vista builds (by the LDDM alpha drivers).
I've tried every single driver and forceware available:
88.61 87.45 87.15 75.03
I even installed the Nvidia driver through the Windows Update Server, still didn't work.. although gave me a nvidia control panel.
None of them seem to turn the glass effect on, in this build. Even tried to force it through the registry but no luck. And still trying to by-pass activation.. I'll prolly uninstall it if I can't get the glass effect to work in a few days.
P.S: Is anyone else finding that the "customize color scheme" section is buggy? I cannot see the different glass colors nor do the "ok" and "cancel" buttons work.
Cheers.

I'm a little unsure about this, but I'll take a stab at it. Wait until Zack, Andre, or one of the other people come around... How did you obtain your copy of Vista? Are you a Technet or MSDN subscriber? I know if you don't have a legitimate copy of Vista, it will at least not let you use Aero Glass from various articles I've read. (At least in the final version. I don't know about beta 2. They might have begun this now.) So, I'm thinking that maybe it won't let you use glass because you haven't activated. This is just a guess. If you activate, see if glass will then work. By the way, I'm not pointing fingers and accusing you because I don't know if you are a subscriber or not. I'm just saying that this might be the problem. I know this was the case when I wanted to get IE7 Beta 2 for XP and couldn't because I didn't activate my copy of Windows XP. The reason why was because I had replaced my motherboard, CPU, and video card (my hard drive also died right before this and I had to use my secondary hard drive partition that was there for Vista to get me by.) and I was only going to get a new hard drive in two weeks, (I installed XP on that new hard drive) so there was no point in activating XP if I was going to change my hard drive in two weeks. It's activated and fine now. "ssq" wrote in message

Hey Guys,
I installed beta 2 (5384.4) a few days ago and installation went through without a hitch... no problems encountered as of yet.. the only thing that is really bugging me is that I can't seem to get the glass effect to work. I have a Nvidia Geforce Go 5200 video card, and Aero ran just fine with the previous Vista builds (by the LDDM alpha drivers).
I've tried every single driver and forceware available:
88.61 87.45 87.15 75.03
I even installed the Nvidia driver through the Windows Update Server, still didn't work.. although gave me a nvidia control panel.
None of them seem to turn the glass effect on, in this build. Even tried to force it through the registry but no luck. And still trying to by-pass activation.. I'll prolly uninstall it if I can't get the glass effect to work in a few days.
P.S: Is anyone else finding that the "customize color scheme" section is buggy? I cannot see the different glass colors nor do the "ok" and "cancel" buttons work.
Cheers.

Its possible that support has been dropped in BETA 2. Its strange though, it was supported in prior versions but in BETA 2, but I had a similar issue actually with my NIC in my Dell 840c, drivers for my 3Com 3C920 were included by default in prior builds, but not 5381 and BETA 2. So, its possible they are either working on new drivers or the next build will include the updated drivers. -- -- Andre Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
"ssq" wrote in message

Hey Guys,
I installed beta 2 (5384.4) a few days ago and installation went through without a hitch... no problems encountered as of yet.. the only thing that is really bugging me is that I can't seem to get the glass effect to work. I have a Nvidia Geforce Go 5200 video card, and Aero ran just fine with the previous Vista builds (by the LDDM alpha drivers).
I've tried every single driver and forceware available:
88.61 87.45 87.15 75.03
I even installed the Nvidia driver through the Windows Update Server, still didn't work.. although gave me a nvidia control panel.
None of them seem to turn the glass effect on, in this build. Even tried to force it through the registry but no luck. And still trying to by-pass activation.. I'll prolly uninstall it if I can't get the glass effect to work in a few days.
P.S: Is anyone else finding that the "customize color scheme" section is buggy? I cannot see the different glass colors nor do the "ok" and "cancel" buttons work.
Cheers.

Well thats strange, I get AERO Glass even before I activate, so its not related to activation. You also get a 13 or 14 day grace period before activation, I activated mine after the 11th day, I still had Glass. I would also try a reinstall to see if it fixes the problem. I would extract the contents of the latest forceware drivers and update the display drivers through Device Manager using the .inf file. -- -- Andre Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
"Travis King" wrote in message

I'm a little unsure about this, but I'll take a stab at it. Wait until Zack, Andre, or one of the other people come around... How did you obtain your copy of Vista? Are you a Technet or MSDN subscriber? I know if you don't have a legitimate copy of Vista, it will at least not let you use Aero Glass from various articles I've read. (At least in the final version. I don't know about beta 2. They might have begun this now.) So, I'm thinking that maybe it won't let you use glass because you haven't activated. This is just a guess. If you activate, see if glass will then work. By the way, I'm not pointing fingers and accusing you because I don't know if you are a subscriber or not. I'm just saying that this might be the problem. I know this was the case when I wanted to get IE7 Beta 2 for XP and couldn't because I didn't activate my copy of Windows XP. The reason why was because I had replaced my motherboard, CPU, and video card (my hard drive also died right before this and I had to use my secondary hard drive partition that was there for Vista to get me by.) and I was only going to get a new hard drive in two weeks, (I installed XP on that new hard drive) so there was no point in activating XP if I was going to change my hard drive in two weeks. It's activated and fine now. "ssq" wrote in message Hey Guys,
I installed beta 2 (5384.4) a few days ago and installation went through without a hitch... no problems encountered as of yet.. the only thing that is really bugging me is that I can't seem to get the glass effect to work. I have a Nvidia Geforce Go 5200 video card, and Aero ran just fine with the previous Vista builds (by the LDDM alpha drivers).
I've tried every single driver and forceware available:
88.61 87.45 87.15 75.03
I even installed the Nvidia driver through the Windows Update Server, still didn't work.. although gave me a nvidia control panel.
None of them seem to turn the glass effect on, in this build. Even tried to force it through the registry but no luck. And still trying to by-pass activation.. I'll prolly uninstall it if I can't get the glass effect to work in a few days.
P.S: Is anyone else finding that the "customize color scheme" section is buggy? I cannot see the different glass colors nor do the "ok" and "cancel" buttons work.
Cheers.

hmm strange why it wouldn't work in the newer builds.. but i guess that's 'beta' for you. Guess I'll just wait and see if a solution to this ever comes up. Oh btw, my vista is activated as well.. has the geniune label on it. Yea i was sure to that the problem might be because of the activation at the time.. but after activating it.. there still wasn't any glass. I miss the previous build :-(
"Travis King" wrote:

I'm a little unsure about this, but I'll take a stab at it. Wait until Zack, Andre, or one of the other people come around... How did you obtain your copy of Vista? Are you a Technet or MSDN subscriber? I know if you don't have a legitimate copy of Vista, it will at least not let you use Aero Glass from various articles I've read. (At least in the final version. I don't know about beta 2. They might have begun this now.) So, I'm thinking that maybe it won't let you use glass because you haven't activated. This is just a guess. If you activate, see if glass will then work. By the way, I'm not pointing fingers and accusing you because I don't know if you are a subscriber or not. I'm just saying that this might be the problem. I know this was the case when I wanted to get IE7 Beta 2 for XP and couldn't because I didn't activate my copy of Windows XP. The reason why was because I had replaced my motherboard, CPU, and video card (my hard drive also died right before this and I had to use my secondary hard drive partition that was there for Vista to get me by.) and I was only going to get a new hard drive in two weeks, (I installed XP on that new hard drive) so there was no point in activating XP if I was going to change my hard drive in two weeks. It's activated and fine now. "ssq" wrote in message Hey Guys,
I installed beta 2 (5384.4) a few days ago and installation went through without a hitch... no problems encountered as of yet.. the only thing that is really bugging me is that I can't seem to get the glass effect to work. I have a Nvidia Geforce Go 5200 video card, and Aero ran just fine with the previous Vista builds (by the LDDM alpha drivers).
I've tried every single driver and forceware available:
88.61 87.45 87.15 75.03
I even installed the Nvidia driver through the Windows Update Server, still didn't work.. although gave me a nvidia control panel.
None of them seem to turn the glass effect on, in this build. Even tried to force it through the registry but no luck. And still trying to by-pass activation.. I'll prolly uninstall it if I can't get the glass effect to work in a few days.
P.S: Is anyone else finding that the "customize color scheme" section is buggy? I cannot see the different glass colors nor do the "ok" and "cancel" buttons work.
Cheers.

yep did with almost every forceware.. used device manager like crazy.. lol. Even re-installed vista to see if that would fix the problem.. but still no luck. I would have thought the alpha drivers would do the job as they did in the previous builds.. but even they didn't work.. strange stuff really.
"Andre Da Costa [Extended64]" wrote:

Well thats strange, I get AERO Glass even before I activate, so its not related to activation. You also get a 13 or 14 day grace period before activation, I activated mine after the 11th day, I still had Glass. I would also try a reinstall to see if it fixes the problem. I would extract the contents of the latest forceware drivers and update the display drivers through Device Manager using the .inf file. -- -- Andre Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
"Travis King" wrote in message I'm a little unsure about this, but I'll take a stab at it. Wait until Zack, Andre, or one of the other people come around... How did you obtain your copy of Vista? Are you a Technet or MSDN subscriber? I know if you don't have a legitimate copy of Vista, it will at least not let you use Aero Glass from various articles I've read. (At least in the final version. I don't know about beta 2. They might have begun this now.) So, I'm thinking that maybe it won't let you use glass because you haven't activated. This is just a guess. If you activate, see if glass will then work. By the way, I'm not pointing fingers and accusing you because I don't know if you are a subscriber or not. I'm just saying that this might be the problem. I know this was the case when I wanted to get IE7 Beta 2 for XP and couldn't because I didn't activate my copy of Windows XP. The reason why was because I had replaced my motherboard, CPU, and video card (my hard drive also died right before this and I had to use my secondary hard drive partition that was there for Vista to get me by.) and I was only going to get a new hard drive in two weeks, (I installed XP on that new hard drive) so there was no point in activating XP if I was going to change my hard drive in two weeks. It's activated and fine now. "ssq" wrote in message Hey Guys,
I installed beta 2 (5384.4) a few days ago and installation went through without a hitch... no problems encountered as of yet.. the only thing that is really bugging me is that I can't seem to get the glass effect to work. I have a Nvidia Geforce Go 5200 video card, and Aero ran just fine with the previous Vista builds (by the LDDM alpha drivers).
I've tried every single driver and forceware available:
88.61 87.45 87.15 75.03
I even installed the Nvidia driver through the Windows Update Server, still didn't work.. although gave me a nvidia control panel.
None of them seem to turn the glass effect on, in this build. Even tried to force it through the registry but no luck. And still trying to by-pass activation.. I'll prolly uninstall it if I can't get the glass effect to work in a few days.
P.S: Is anyone else finding that the "customize color scheme" section is buggy? I cannot see the different glass colors nor do the "ok" and "cancel" buttons work.
Cheers.

I guess you just have to send in feedback using the Feedback link on your Vista desktop and also download the Reporting tool and send in a driver request and report the current compatibility issue. -- -- Andre Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
"ssq" wrote in message

yep did with almost every forceware.. used device manager like crazy.. lol. Even re-installed vista to see if that would fix the problem.. but still no luck. I would have thought the alpha drivers would do the job as they did in the previous builds.. but even they didn't work.. strange stuff really.
"Andre Da Costa [Extended64]" wrote:
Well thats strange, I get AERO Glass even before I activate, so its not related to activation. You also get a 13 or 14 day grace period before activation, I activated mine after the 11th day, I still had Glass. I would also try a reinstall to see if it fixes the problem. I would extract the contents of the latest forceware drivers and update the display drivers through Device Manager using the .inf file. -- -- Andre Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
"Travis King" wrote in message I'm a little unsure about this, but I'll take a stab at it. Wait until Zack, Andre, or one of the other people come around... How did you obtain your copy of Vista? Are you a Technet or MSDN subscriber? I know if you don't have a legitimate copy of Vista, it will at least not let you use Aero Glass from various articles I've read. (At least in the final version. I don't know about beta 2. They might have begun this now.) So, I'm thinking that maybe it won't let you use glass because you haven't activated. This is just a guess. If you activate, see if glass will then work. By the way, I'm not pointing fingers and accusing you because I don't know if you are a subscriber or not. I'm just saying that this might be the problem. I know this was the case when I wanted to get IE7 Beta 2 for XP and couldn't because I didn't activate my copy of Windows XP. The reason why was because I had replaced my motherboard, CPU, and video card (my hard drive also died right before this and I had to use my secondary hard drive partition that was there for Vista to get me by.) and I was only going to get a new hard drive in two weeks, (I installed XP on that new hard drive) so there was no point in activating XP if I was going to change my hard drive in two weeks. It's activated and fine now. "ssq" wrote in message Hey Guys,
I installed beta 2 (5384.4) a few days ago and installation went through without a hitch... no problems encountered as of yet.. the only thing that is really bugging me is that I can't seem to get the glass effect to work. I have a Nvidia Geforce Go 5200 video card, and Aero ran just fine with the previous Vista builds (by the LDDM alpha drivers).
I've tried every single driver and forceware available:
88.61 87.45 87.15 75.03
I even installed the Nvidia driver through the Windows Update Server, still didn't work.. although gave me a nvidia control panel.
None of them seem to turn the glass effect on, in this build. Even tried to force it through the registry but no luck. And still trying to by-pass activation.. I'll prolly uninstall it if I can't get the glass effect to work in a few days.
P.S: Is anyone else finding that the "customize color scheme" section is buggy? I cannot see the different glass colors nor do the "ok" and "cancel" buttons work.
Cheers.

I would disable any of your old apps from startup, you may be getting "switching to compatibility mode" warnings that your not seeing before boot or something like that.
Several programs i run such as Opera alwasys drop me back to the old interface.
"ssq" wrote in message

yep did with almost every forceware.. used device manager like crazy.. lol. Even re-installed vista to see if that would fix the problem.. but still no luck. I would have thought the alpha drivers would do the job as they did in the previous builds.. but even they didn't work.. strange stuff really.
"Andre Da Costa [Extended64]" wrote:
Well thats strange, I get AERO Glass even before I activate, so its not related to activation. You also get a 13 or 14 day grace period before activation, I activated mine after the 11th day, I still had Glass. I would also try a reinstall to see if it fixes the problem. I would extract the contents of the latest forceware drivers and update the display drivers through Device Manager using the .inf file. -- -- Andre Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
"Travis King" wrote in message I'm a little unsure about this, but I'll take a stab at it. Wait until Zack, Andre, or one of the other people come around... How did you obtain your copy of Vista? Are you a Technet or MSDN subscriber? I know if you don't have a legitimate copy of Vista, it will at least not let you use Aero Glass from various articles I've read. (At least in the final version. I don't know about beta 2. They might have begun this now.) So, I'm thinking that maybe it won't let you use glass because you haven't activated. This is just a guess. If you activate, see if glass will then work. By the way, I'm not pointing fingers and accusing you because I don't know if you are a subscriber or not. I'm just saying that this might be the problem. I know this was the case when I wanted to get IE7 Beta 2 for XP and couldn't because I didn't activate my copy of Windows XP. The reason why was because I had replaced my motherboard, CPU, and video card (my hard drive also died right before this and I had to use my secondary hard drive partition that was there for Vista to get me by.) and I was only going to get a new hard drive in two weeks, (I installed XP on that new hard drive) so there was no point in activating XP if I was going to change my hard drive in two weeks. It's activated and fine now. "ssq" wrote in message Hey Guys,
I installed beta 2 (5384.4) a few days ago and installation went through without a hitch... no problems encountered as of yet.. the only thing that is really bugging me is that I can't seem to get the glass effect to work. I have a Nvidia Geforce Go 5200 video card, and Aero ran just fine with the previous Vista builds (by the LDDM alpha drivers).
I've tried every single driver and forceware available:
88.61 87.45 87.15 75.03
I even installed the Nvidia driver through the Windows Update Server, still didn't work.. although gave me a nvidia control panel.
None of them seem to turn the glass effect on, in this build. Even tried to force it through the registry but no luck. And still trying to by-pass activation.. I'll prolly uninstall it if I can't get the glass effect to work in a few days.
P.S: Is anyone else finding that the "customize color scheme" section is buggy? I cannot see the different glass colors nor do the "ok" and "cancel" buttons work.
Cheers.

There could be a possibility that some program is conflicting with Aero but even after a fresh installation it doesn't show up.. so I don't think there is a problem there. However, I did look into msconfig and looked into the Services section and saw that the Desktop Window Manager Session Manager has a status displayed as stopped. I believe this service is in charge of Aero, unless i'm mistaken. I'm not too sure how to get this service running as I cannot do it from msconfig. Does anyone else have a similar status but has Aero still working?
"Andre Da Costa [Extended64]" wrote:

Its possible that support has been dropped in BETA 2. Its strange though, it was supported in prior versions but in BETA 2, but I had a similar issue actually with my NIC in my Dell 840c, drivers for my 3Com 3C920 were included by default in prior builds, but not 5381 and BETA 2. So, its possible they are either working on new drivers or the next build will include the updated drivers. -- -- Andre Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
"ssq" wrote in message Hey Guys,
I installed beta 2 (5384.4) a few days ago and installation went through without a hitch... no problems encountered as of yet.. the only thing that is really bugging me is that I can't seem to get the glass effect to work. I have a Nvidia Geforce Go 5200 video card, and Aero ran just fine with the previous Vista builds (by the LDDM alpha drivers).
I've tried every single driver and forceware available:
88.61 87.45 87.15 75.03
I even installed the Nvidia driver through the Windows Update Server, still didn't work.. although gave me a nvidia control panel.
None of them seem to turn the glass effect on, in this build. Even tried to force it through the registry but no luck. And still trying to by-pass activation.. I'll prolly uninstall it if I can't get the glass effect to work in a few days.
P.S: Is anyone else finding that the "customize color scheme" section is buggy? I cannot see the different glass colors nor do the "ok" and "cancel" buttons work.
Cheers.

After 3 weeks of intense struggling and frustration.. I finally got Aero working!!! WOOT! :D I didn't really think it would work as I stumbled onto the solution. Anywhoo here's what I did,
I went to reinstall my video drivers and if you just click on "browse my computer for software" then click on "let me pick from a list of device drivers..." and you should see your standard VGA driver available and your default Nvidia driver (if installed before) available. Click on the checkbox that says "Show Compatible Hardware" and then you'll see a list of drivers showing up. Just select the driver corresponding to your card, for me it was FX Go5200...and make sure it has written (WDDM) beside it...otherwise as you know its not going to work. Anywhoo, once you restart your computer, you still won't see Aero. I do not know if it really makes a difference but, once I restarted my pc I changed my resolution to 800x600 and then went into Customize themes, and saw "Windows Aero" available as an option (which I did not have before), so I selected that, and voila I got Aero! After I got it enabled, I changed my resolution back to 1400x1050 and aero still worked perfectly! With the new driver you will notice a couple of things if you hadn't already. In dxdiag, your video memory would show as zero if the right driver is not installed and as well as your Performance Test rating will be low for your video card as a result. However once you select the right driver, you will see dxdiag display the right video memory...and your Peformance rating for your video card will go up. Well I hope this works for the rest of you guys who are having trouble. I've posted some more details about my video driver, just in case if you have the similar card. Let me know if you find something unclear. Best of luck!
Cheers
Driver Date: 27/04/06 Driver Version: 6.14.10.8798
Driver details:
system32\DRIVERS\nvlddmkm.sys system32\nvapi.dll system32\nvd3dum.dll
"ssq" wrote:

Hey Guys,
I installed beta 2 (5384.4) a few days ago and installation went through without a hitch... no problems encountered as of yet.. the only thing that is really bugging me is that I can't seem to get the glass effect to work. I have a Nvidia Geforce Go 5200 video card, and Aero ran just fine with the previous Vista builds (by the LDDM alpha drivers).
I've tried every single driver and forceware available:
88.61 87.45 87.15 75.03
I even installed the Nvidia driver through the Windows Update Server, still didn't work.. although gave me a nvidia control panel.
None of them seem to turn the glass effect on, in this build. Even tried to force it through the registry but no luck. And still trying to by-pass activation.. I'll prolly uninstall it if I can't get the glass effect to work in a few days.
P.S: Is anyone else finding that the "customize color scheme" section is buggy? I cannot see the different glass colors nor do the "ok" and "cancel" buttons work.
Cheers.