Easily Disable Win 7 or Vista’s Aero Before Running an Application (Such as a Video Game)
You might be concerned with squeezing every last bit of performance out of your machine, or may have compatibility problems between Aero and an application that you are running. Either way you are looking for the simplest way to disable Aero while running that application, and this is it.
You can edit the properties of a shortcut and tell Windows to automatically disable Aero as soon as you start that application, and then re-enable it again once the application is closed.
Simply right-click on the shortcut and choose Properties, and then the Compatibility tab:
Now on the Settings block check the box for “Disable desktop composition” in order to disable Aero the next time you use the shortcut.
If you are having other compatibility problems I’d recommend using the compatibility modes on this same dialog. Note that we have covered Win7/Vista compatibility mode before, but I think it’s useful to point this out specifically.
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This is simply wrong advice for benefiting games. Vista’s composition runs through dx10. When a game requests the video hardware through either DX or OGL, the desktop effects are put on hold. The only time this might benefit someone is if they’re running a DX game in a window. This is the only case where I have seen Vista’s aero to stay running during a game. When any windowed program uses OGL, then aero is automatically disabled.
It might help for compatibility with older games though, but in general I agree with Jordan, this is probably not necessary for increasing performance in games.
Doing this for the Eve-online client solved a wierd problem where I would get a nice high FPS (100+) for 5-15mins then it would crash to 10 FPS or so. So worth a shot if you are having any issues on specific games…
Yes, and it’s a probably a great idea for the few games/3D apps that do run within windows, such as SecondLife.
Good Tip!
HAHAHAHA! After reading this tip I instantly change my World of Warcraft shortcut to disable Aero…And now that I (accidentally) came to this page again…What do I see? Screenshot of WoW properties xDDDDDDDDD
This is a good tip. Despite aero effects being put on hold while running games and therefore not affecting performance, aero has still caused me a number of bugs in games regarding incorrect resolutions being displayed. I was having to manually turn off aero when i played most games otherwise i was getting the display shrunk into a corner of the screen or conversely was only able to see a quarter of the play area. I don’t no if this was also because i was playing through a digital tv via hdmi and tv resolutions caused problems but this tip has saved me a lot of hassle! Nice one!
good tip ! =) thx!
A lot of people run games in windows. I’m one of them. I already knew this, but I definitely don’t think some people looking to turn this off for windowed games is rare. It’s a useful tip.
Some games do automatically disable it even when windowed. WoW isn’t one of them.
^^ will apply it tonight, as lately when playing WoW on vista-64 Ultimate SP1, i’ve geen getting appauling FPS when in raids. I have a nvidia 8800GTX, and on XP-32, i could happily play at 1650×1280, with all visual’s maxed out and still get 25-45fps when all hell is being let loose in a 25man raid. However now i seemm to get about 10fps if im lucky and thats when all effects are on low to medium settings
will repost if it fixes it
Thanks for this tip – I have tons of customers who will benefit from it!
Solved my problem with full screen PowerDVD (I only have a 64mb card, which is fine for general Aero, but would make full screen video choppy)…
For you virtualization weenies (like me), this works around the client screen re-draw issues within the VMware vSphere client running on Vista and Windows 7. Now if only VMware would FIX the client for real, so it doesn’t make all my other windows “ugly” while it’s running… [It'd be really cool to find a way to make this only affect the vSphere client.] Thanks Lowell!
There’s is NO compatibility tab on the properties in Win7 64bit (RC).
Thank you so much !
I have Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, and ever since I upgraded it from Vista, I have had nothing but issues. I can’t run Doom 3, Diablo 2, or Neverwinter Nights. I tried to disable visual themes and put in compatibility mode, but it doesn’t work. I don’t know why this happened, but I don’t want to have to sell all these games due to a retarded error.