i have an intriguing issue which I hope some lateral thinker can help me with!
On my aged laptop, have a partitioned HD - one side runs with XP and the other with Win 7. This was set up on my 4 year old laptop a couple of months ago by a retail/engineer shop following the burn-out of my old HD.
The XP is original on the machine and the W7 was installed by the shop using an OEM key.
Today, when closing down from XP, There was a short power outage. Next time I booted up in Win 7 I got a BSOD. Panicking somewhat and forgetting at that moment all about the power outage earlier, I ran the start up repair tool.
Of course Win 7 opened, but not with the usual background behind my users photos. When I logged in and it fully opened, the slideshow theme I set up was still running OK but all of the display settings had reverted to what I would call a very basic classic Win 98 mode. Gone were the nice aero touches. See the photo of the taskbar here:
The icons with descriptions are the open applications. needless to say there is no thumbnail view.
the icons have all reverted to basic default and the windows have '98 style borders and top right buttons.
Also my browser and e-mail client has reverted to a basic utilitarian look and windows such as notepad all have a gray border around them.
Whatever I have tried has not re-enabled them. In troubleshooting it says 2 things, 1. that the chosen theme does not support Aero. This is daft because i chose and Aero theme. And, 2. That the desktop Window manager is disabled. When I check, it is actually enabled.
I have done a windows update - no change
I did a complete cold install of graphics card drivers using a removal tool and re installing in safe mode....no change
I tried system restore and, although I created a restore point 3 weeks ago after ridding my machine of some malware. Windows says that it can find no restore point to restore to prior to the stat up repair.
I really think its an OS problem...heres why:
Everything else works fine. The Graphics card troubleshoot says its working without issue. The DirectX troubleshoot gives it a clean bill of health. It is displaying the theme desktop background photos OK and changing them according to the theme settings.When in XP everything works and displays without any issue. The system is more than man enough to run Aero graphics. I have checked that out. Besides, before this happened, it was running them just fine.
Here is a report from the DirectX diagnostic tool:
I have some other diagnostic reports too which I could attach if needed.
I feel that something has been altered during the start up repair I foolishly ran.
Please help!
Barry
On my aged laptop, have a partitioned HD - one side runs with XP and the other with Win 7. This was set up on my 4 year old laptop a couple of months ago by a retail/engineer shop following the burn-out of my old HD.
The XP is original on the machine and the W7 was installed by the shop using an OEM key.
Today, when closing down from XP, There was a short power outage. Next time I booted up in Win 7 I got a BSOD. Panicking somewhat and forgetting at that moment all about the power outage earlier, I ran the start up repair tool.
Of course Win 7 opened, but not with the usual background behind my users photos. When I logged in and it fully opened, the slideshow theme I set up was still running OK but all of the display settings had reverted to what I would call a very basic classic Win 98 mode. Gone were the nice aero touches. See the photo of the taskbar here:
The icons with descriptions are the open applications. needless to say there is no thumbnail view.
the icons have all reverted to basic default and the windows have '98 style borders and top right buttons.
Also my browser and e-mail client has reverted to a basic utilitarian look and windows such as notepad all have a gray border around them.
Whatever I have tried has not re-enabled them. In troubleshooting it says 2 things, 1. that the chosen theme does not support Aero. This is daft because i chose and Aero theme. And, 2. That the desktop Window manager is disabled. When I check, it is actually enabled.
I have done a windows update - no change
I did a complete cold install of graphics card drivers using a removal tool and re installing in safe mode....no change
I tried system restore and, although I created a restore point 3 weeks ago after ridding my machine of some malware. Windows says that it can find no restore point to restore to prior to the stat up repair.
I really think its an OS problem...heres why:
Everything else works fine. The Graphics card troubleshoot says its working without issue. The DirectX troubleshoot gives it a clean bill of health. It is displaying the theme desktop background photos OK and changing them according to the theme settings.When in XP everything works and displays without any issue. The system is more than man enough to run Aero graphics. I have checked that out. Besides, before this happened, it was running them just fine.
Here is a report from the DirectX diagnostic tool:
I have some other diagnostic reports too which I could attach if needed.
I feel that something has been altered during the start up repair I foolishly ran.
Please help!
Barry
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