Easily Disable 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 vista's compatibility mode before, but I think it's useful to point this out specifically.
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!