Cant Enable Aero Theme On 2008 R2, Need Help

[Enigma]

Hi, just got a new gaming laptop as a birthday gift a few days ago and I’m now having trouble enabling the Aero theme in Control Panel. It manhandles all games i have installed with no issues whatsoever and is a monster to carry around, very heavy. also cools well and has i7 processor plus 12 gigs RAM. I have no complaints whatsoever, except that the NumPad doesnt seem to function as intended, called ASUS tech support and they say a BIOS patch is in the works, with a beta version already available for download. ALmost decided to return it to the store for a refund when i discovered this. this is a gaming laptop from ASUS, it’s a G74SX, got it at CompUSA/TigerDirect for $1600. I’ll start by posting a link to my specs:

http://www.asus.com/Notebooks/Gaming_Powerhouse/G74SX/#specifications

It came with 7 Home Premium, i already knew i wanted to dualboot 2008 R2 and BackTrack/Ubuntu Linux on it so i formated the HDD and reinstalled. Before doing so i made a 1:1 exact image of the HDD/partitions with Acronis True Image so i can always go back to 7 if i ever want to, and have everything the way it was after first powering it on.

It came with a driver disc, i tried to run the setup file thru AutoPlay but was immediately hit with an error dialog about wrong OS version, blah, blah, blah. So I copied the contents of the disc to HDD and immediately began inspecting the individual files. I found a few .ini (initialization) files and opened them with Notepad, found alot of lines in them that said “OS_Version= Win7 enterprise/ultimate/starter, home premium/etc. so after deleting those lines and saving then burning a new disc all drivers installed without a hitch.i used this exact same method over a yr ago with another ASUS i had but it resulted in numerous errors upon reboot (after getting to the desktop), so i was sure this time there would be more errors. but there were none.

After that i enabled the Desktop Experience, WIreless LAN, Server Backup, and . Net framework 3.5 in Server Manager and rebooted. Then i went to control panel and the Win7 themes are vissibly present but grayed out. My NVIDIA drivers are already installed (before turning on Desktop Experience). I have the Themes and Desktop Window Manager and Windows Audio services set to Automatic as well. And i also have the option set (whereever its found) for best performance.

A few other unrelated issues i am having is that the sound does not seem to be as good as it was when 7 was still installed. just yesterday i was playing world of warcraft and watching Fast and Furious Fast Five (2011 release) with a few friends and they were all amazed at the sound quality. but after doing the same things on 2008 r2 and watching vids on youtube, the sound just seems alot lower and tinnier than it was before. maybe its my imagination but im sure its not. i have tried modifying the settings for my sound hardware in Control Panel and maxxed the volume controls up to 100%, still no improvement. Does Server have known issues with audio playback?

Would also like to know about some good software for playing BluRay quality discs and files at true HD 1080p quality, since my hardware has full HD support for video and audio. VLC Media Player does not seem to be able to do the job, neither can Windows Media Player. at least not in HD quality anyways.

How can i enable the Sleep and Hibernate options in the Start Menu? i have noticed that 7 has them but Server sems to lack them.

Last question, is it better to simply install the drivers that are provided on the ASUS website, or should i go directly to the actual makers of the internal devices themselves? i know that sometimes the latter will have more recent driver versions than the OEM manufacturers, although the OEM drivers do tend to be more optimized for the specific machine, whereas the latter is more generalized. i also know how difficult it can be to find drivers that work correctly on 2008/2008 R2 in particular. I’m just wondering since the ones on the disc installed fine.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!

[halladayrules]

As for your Windows Aero issue…

1. Verify that the themes service is running

Open command prompt and type:

sc query themes

Under “state” make sure it says RUNNING

Also verify that Desktop Window Manager Session Manager (AERO service) is running

sc query uxsms

Under “state” make sure it says RUNNING

2. Is your performance options set to “Adjust for best appearance”?

Click start, right-click Computer and choose Properties. Next go to Advanced System Settings.
Under performance choose Settings…

Change to Adjust for best appearance.

For a potential quick fix, you could try creating another user account and logging into it, then
seeing if you can enable a Aero theme in “Personalization”

@Enigma wrote:

A few other unrelated issues i am having is that the sound does not seem to be as good as it was when 7 was still installed. just yesterday i was playing world of warcraft and watching Fast and Furious Fast Five (2011 release) with a few friends and they were all amazed at the sound quality. but after doing the same things on 2008 r2 and watching vids on youtube, the sound just seems alot lower and tinnier than it was before. maybe its my imagination but im sure its not. i have tried modifying the settings for my sound hardware in Control Panel and maxxed the volume controls up to 100%, still no improvement. Does Server have known issues with audio playback?

Try the following fixes:

1. Disabling core parking on your core i7 should noticably speed up performance on your R2 machine. A forum user named Hypernova discovered this issue a few years back. The following fix helped improve the performance of his i7 machine running R2.

How to disable core parking: http://ultimatecomputers.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3644

Hypernova’s issue: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1112

2. Enable sound acceleration

[youtube:3vvpss6y]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLW5hR1PhDw[/youtube:3vvpss6y]

3. Prioritize more CPU power to Multimedia tasks by creating the following registry key and importing it into your registry.

*****COPY EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE****

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionMultimediaSystemProfile]
“SystemResponsiveness”=dword:00000014

***** COPY EVERYTHING ABOVE THIS LINE ***

Save file as audiostutterfix.reg or something appropriate. Then double click on fix to open it and import it into your registry.

The following above tweaks should improve your sound quality.

@Enigma wrote:

Would also like to know about some good software for playing BluRay quality discs and files at true HD 1080p quality, since my hardware has full HD support for video and audio. VLC Media Player does not seem to be able to do the job, neither can Windows Media Player. at least not in HD quality anyways.

Corel WinDVD and Cyberlink’s PowerDVD are the only two that come to mind when I think of 1080P blu ray playback. Both very good.

@Enigma wrote:

How can i enable the Sleep and Hibernate options in the Start Menu? i have noticed that 7 has them but Server sems to lack them.

Cool thanks for reminding me. I was going to make a tutorial on how to do this months ago but I completely forgot. HAHA. Here you go!

[youtube:3vvpss6y]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z-hrtTcMR8[/youtube:3vvpss6y]

@Enigma wrote:

Last question, is it better to simply install the drivers that are provided on the ASUS website, or should i go directly to the actual makers of the internal devices themselves? i know that sometimes the latter will have more recent driver versions than the OEM manufacturers, although the OEM drivers do tend to be more optimized for the specific machine, whereas the latter is more generalized. i also know how difficult it can be to find drivers that work correctly on 2008/2008 R2 in particular. I’m just wondering since the ones on the disc installed fine.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!

I always think that it is best to go directly to the manufacture of the chip (NVIDIA, ATI, Intel, etc) rather than the OEMs website because you cannot always assume that they have the latest driver available, especially when your product begins to end its retail shelf life. For example my Dell Latitude E5400 laptop used to have my graphics driver up to date when Vista came out but when 7 came out they only released a few updated versions and they haven’t updated my graphics driver for like 2 years now. I go to the Intel website for my chipset and they have made like 5 revisions since Dell’s last update! Just my opinion, but i’ve always preferred to go directly to manufacture.

However I will say that OEMs are very useful for locating drivers on older machines in which you cannot easily locate the model of the hardware that is installed. For example the audio could be integrated on the board and in device manager you just see “High Definition Audio Device” with no clue about what “exact” type it is… so what I usually do is if I can locate the OEM model of the laptop, for example an HP DV1000, all i have to do is go to HP.com and locate the model “hp dv1000” and find out either in the product specifications or the software drivers download page what exact audio driver it is.

I partly agree with your assessment that OEM drivers are optimized for your machine, but the source code is ultimately derived from the manufacture so no matter what way you put it, the “OEM driver” is just a manufacture driver sprinkled with software goodies to make it more user friendly. For example my dell driver for my laptop came with a Dell WiFi connect utility to easily manage WIFI connections, although I prefer to do so in default Windows. It’s usually hit or miss. Most of the times though, I just prefer the basic driver only, no software packages.

[Author]

Posts