How to enable “Glass” effects in Vista w/o using LDDM Drivers – Part 1
September 21st, 2005 by 
Patrick Elliott
While surfing around on my seemingly endless quest to find LDDM drivers that actually load correctly on my Geforce FX Go5200 card in my Inspiron 5150, I stumbled upon this article , and a link called “Enable new Avalon engine”.
Hmm.. I thought, surely they couldn’t mean I could set a simple, stupid, everyday reg key to see the beautiful effects that Glass (Aero) has to offer. My gut instinct couldn’t have been further from the truth. Apparently this regkey has its roots at least as far back at build 5048, allowing you to “peek” at the Glass effects, anyway, now that build 5219 is out to testers, I’ll offer the information here so that those of you in my situation can at least play w/ the Glass effects while running your XP Drivers!!
**NOTE** — In build 5219 (at least on my system) this WILL BREAK D3D/DirectX dependent apps like all the games distributed with this build, to set your system BACK to the way it was prior to this mod, simply change the DWORD value mentioned below from 0 to 1, log off, and you will be using the XP style UI in which D3D/DirectX will still work *****
To enable the Glass effects:
Open Regedit
Change to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft key
Create a new key called DWM
In the new DWM key you created, create a DWORD called EnableMachineCheck.
Set this DWORD to 0
Log off of Vista
When you log back in… beautiful Glass effects, all through XP drivers.
More coming once I figure out how to NOT make this break DirectX…
😛 Patrick Elliott / MSBLOG
Posted in Products, Windows Vista | 
11 Comments »
September 21st, 2005 at 1:50 am
Sounds Awesome…Sure will come in handy for those who have Vista and cant use the Glass effect
September 21st, 2005 at 10:09 am
Oh and I’m unable to install the XP driver for my ATI. The setup kept failling…
September 21st, 2005 at 10:45 am
I’m testing this in VMWare… and crossing my fingers that it only breaks D3D/DirectX on my laptop’s Nvidia card..
September 21st, 2005 at 11:23 am
I just install the Offical Drivers from the Manufactors website and then Use Tweakvista Programe to enable Glass effect on supported Cards and many other features 🙂
September 21st, 2005 at 1:06 pm
Were you running Tweakvista on 5219 on 5112? It crashes upon loading on 5219 on my system, hence why I went looking for the actual registry key that it would be setting.. I believe from the crash information that it doesn’t like the netfx build on 5219.
September 22nd, 2005 at 5:18 am
In 5112 I used tweakvista to enable the Glass since for a strange reason it didnt allow me to start the Glass Mangement interface, but in 5219 I just installed the drivers and it worked 🙂
May 16th, 2006 at 3:15 am
Couldn’t get Aero effect, i tried all these kind of registry settings, i m using intel 945 Gm (Lenovo Laptop N 3000).
Please help me guys
May 16th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
What graphic card are you using Brij? This registry hack doesn’ work on all graphic cards…
July 6th, 2006 at 6:29 am
hi, jabez
i am using an intel 945 GM with intel 950 GMA inside
July 6th, 2006 at 1:32 pm
This isnt working on my Dell Inspiron 8500 Laptop. Has a 64mb Geforce 4 4200GO Series GPU based on the geforce ti4000 back in 02 or 03…the nv28 chip. IT SHOULD support these effects. The reg hack didnt work. Tried using nvidia’s latest drivers, 70 series drivers, and the windows nvidia driver. Nothing is working!
August 10th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
I’m using the Intel 945GM vid chip as well.
I remember reading somewhere that the 945 series were supposed to be geared toward Vista.
It even says on this laptop “Vista Capable” which I know doesn’t nessesarily mean that the glass effects are possible.