Windows 7 Aero problem with Colour Depth

Andybtsn · 1 Apr 2011 at 18:21

Hi Guys,

I bought a HP 62 Laptop with an ATI Radeon HD 4200 series Graphics card. Just going into Screen Resolution settings and Aero transparency settings appeared disabled so I ran the troubleshooting finder and the following appears to be the problem:

How do you change your colour depth? I've never seen this issue before so not sure where the problem lies, if it means if I'm running in 32bit mode, I am...

Any ideas?

Mattus · 1 Apr 2011 at 23:06

Yeah, I think low color depth disables Aero.

Right click on desktop, click screen resolution. Click advanced settings. Choose the monitor tab. Set the color depth to 32 bit.

Andybtsn · 1 Apr 2011 at 23:31

That's the thing...it is, I have the options of 32 or 16 and it's 32. Bizarre..

marc2003 · 1 Apr 2011 at 23:37

do you have proper ati drivers installed rather than relying what's built into windows?

Andybtsn · 1 Apr 2011 at 23:39

marc2003 said:
do you have proper ati drivers installed rather than relying what's built into windows?

Yeah, downloaded the latest drivers this evening to replace the ones Windows automatically assigns.

Mattus · 1 Apr 2011 at 23:42

Hmm. Maybe the window manager service is just disabled, then. Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services, check if Desktop Window Manager Session Manager is running. Start it if not.

Andybtsn · 1 Apr 2011 at 23:57

Yeah it's running. This is really annoying me!

Mattus · 1 Apr 2011 at 23:59

Last thing I can think of: do you have LogMeIn installed, or any other software which can mirror the screen? Those can cause Aero problems if they install virtual display drivers. Go into device manager and see if you have any additional display drivers installed.

Andybtsn · 2 Apr 2011 at 00:10

Mattus said:
Last thing I can think of: do you have LogMeIn installed, or any other software which can mirror the screen? Those can cause Aero problems if they install virtual display drivers. Go into device manager and see if you have any additional display drivers installed.

Ah, you're genious mate, I have Air Display installed for my iPad. Disabled this and it has rectified things. Shame though as I want it enabled

I guess it's what is more important...

L1ght · 2 Apr 2011 at 16:34

I had a problem for over a year where I could not get Aero to initialise after rebooting. I asked everywhere and no one could find the problem, I even went into the windows setting and tried to force start Aero, but nothing worked. Finally on the windows fourm I was advised to close basically all irrelevent applications in task manager and it worked. The conflicting program was GamerOSD or Gamerspy which was installed with all my graphics card utilities or some game off steam. My advice would be to disable all irrelevent programs in task manager then windows experience index test.

Goodluck, Aero is a b1%tch to get to work and frustrated me for ages.

asim18 · 2 Apr 2011 at 21:52

L1ght said:
Goodluck, Aero is a b1%tch to get to work and frustrated me for ages.

Aero is excellent imo, and has always worked perfectly for me since since the day Vista was released.

Any issue/incompatibility is obviously Apple's/developer's fault.