Taskbar not Changing to Aero

I would give a 95% probability it is your video drivers or some form of incompatibility between the two. Since you say it worked until right about the time you installed the second one, I would suggest completely removing the last video card installed and it's drivers, then reboot and see if the Aero works then.

Or wait for another couple of months when Veedaz makes his next appearance and solves your issue

Just kidding!

Yeah, that sounds like a plan. At least it should diagnose if it's an issue with the graphics card or not.
I shall get round to doing it when I can and report back, thanks!

Could you please attach a picture of that?

Hi, sorry I left it a while but I've done what you asked. Un-installing Nvidia components doesn't change anything. I un-installed it as thoroughly as I know how so I don't think there is any issue there.
Also I have a screenshot of my desktop, assuming I've attached it correctly; I don't use forums much

Hmmm...it seems the image has been quite massively resized. Oh well, you can see that the borders on the windows are aero but the sidebar and taskbar aren't. Also, it shows I'm set to windows classic.

Well in Windows Classic Aero is disabled, which makes me wonder if you created your own theme and overwrote the classic theme or something and ended up with this splice.

Could you open the registry editor and, Without Changing Anything, work your way down to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM and see if it looks similar to mine. You will likely not have Blur nor Glass, as I added those, but see if the rest of what you have matches.



Also could you try this ...
Do you have any other userids on this computer? If not please create one and see if the display is normal when you log on as that ID.

I made a new user and the issues remained. However there are differences in our registry stuff. I added some things to the registry that were meant to fix the problem (they didn't) but there are also other differences, besides the ones you mentioned.
The information in regedit also changes if I change between a non-aero and an aero theme. I assume this is normal but it does seem to suggest that aero is being turned on it just doesn't say so in the Personalization window.
Also, I did download a third-party theme. I doubt it was malicious but I have since deleted it. Could that have been an issue?

Yes it is a very good possibility it altered something, agreed probably not to be malicious, more likely just to accomplish it's purpose. When you uninstalled it did you first set things back to normal?

I have a hunch it is either LastDisqualifiedCompositionSignature or UseMachineCheck. This is just a hunch so I'm trying to find out more about them. From what I have read, the UseMachineCheck is used by people that can't get Aero normally; I'm curious, did you have to force Aero on because your system wouldn't run it natively?

I did actually find another thread with your problem of only the taskbar being non-Aero but unfortunately it had no answer.

I will let you know if I have any other ideas but I find that you creating a new userid and it having the same problem as somewhat of a disappointment, I had hoped we could compare the two IDs and it point to a solution

I'm not sure what I was set to when I uninstalled it. It's hard to tell what settings I have when the personalisation window refuses to alter from windows classic. I did go into the themes folder and delete any trace of it.
'UseMachineCheck' is probably one I added in an attempt to force the taskbar to aero. It's only the taskbar I was trying to force though; Aero runs fine otherwise (I have an aero capable system)
I probably saw that thread too. Unfortunately not many people seem to suffer from this problem and finding a solution doesn't seem that easy but thank you for your efforts so far, I too shall research those registry files.