{"id":488,"date":"2011-05-13T16:02:52","date_gmt":"2011-05-13T15:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/?p=488"},"modified":"2025-07-14T23:06:26","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T22:06:26","slug":"windows-7-aero-theme-not-enabled-after-deployment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/deployment\/windows-7-aero-theme-not-enabled-after-deployment\/","title":{"rendered":"Windows 7 Aero Theme Not Enabled After Deployment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Overview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>An issue I saw a number of times at customers was that the Windows 7 Aero theme was not enabled after deployment. I saw this numerous times in early workshops and pilots for customers and completely forgot about it until I saw the question asked again a few weeks ago. So here is a post describing the sort of symptoms you might see and how to workaround it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Aero Troubleshooting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>There are two main tools that people turn to when troubleshooting Aero:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Running the &#8216;<strong>Find and fix problems with transparency and other visual effects<\/strong>&#8216; troubleshooter that attempts to automatically find and fix issues.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Re-running the Desktop Window Manager (DWM) WinSAT test (either through the standard interface or by running &#8216;winsat dwm&#8217; from the command line).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>In the case of this particular issue both of these methods will not solve the problem and simply report that &#8216;<strong>DWM not running<\/strong>&#8216; or &#8216;<strong>Desktop Window Manager is disabled<\/strong>&#8216; and the system will still not enable Aero. The strange thing is you can get Aero by doing the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Right-click the desktop, select <strong>Personalize<\/strong>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Re-select the standard <strong>Windows 7<\/strong> theme (or any other Aero theme).<figure><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/SelectAeroTheme1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Select Windows 7 Aero Theme\" width=\"461\" height=\"184\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-497\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/SelectAeroTheme1.png\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/SelectAeroTheme1.png 576w, https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/SelectAeroTheme1-300x120.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 461px) 100vw, 461px\" \/><\/a><\/figure><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Aero magically starts working again.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Obviously, manually selecting the Windows 7 theme on each machine isn&#8217;t going to work when you are deploying more than a couple of machines, but there are two simple solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Solution 1<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The easiest solution for an enterprise customer is probably going to be by using Group Policy:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Find the path of a theme we want to use &#8211; <strong>aero.theme<\/strong> is the standard Windows 7 theme and can be found in <strong>C:\\Windows\\Resources\\Themes\\aero.theme<figure><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/ThemeFolder.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Windows Themes Folder\" width=\"440\" height=\"251\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-493\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/ThemeFolder.png\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/ThemeFolder.png 550w, https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/ThemeFolder-300x171.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 440px) 100vw, 440px\" \/><\/a><\/figure><\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Open the Group Policy console (gpmc or local group policy as required).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Find the policy <strong>User Configuration \\ Administrative Templates \\ Personalization \\ Load a specific theme<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Enter the path of the theme, we will use an environment variable so that it works on all machines: <strong>%windir%\\Resources\\Themes\\aero.theme<figure><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/AeroGPO.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Windows Aero Group Policy\" width=\"560\" height=\"304\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-522\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/AeroGPO.png\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/AeroGPO.png 700w, https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/AeroGPO-300x163.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/a><\/figure><\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Save the policy and apply it to the relevant Organizational Units (OUs).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Note<\/strong>: This only changes the theme for a user&#8217;s first-time logon which makes it quite a neat solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Solution 2<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The second solution can be used when deploying Windows 7 using an <em>unattend.xml<\/em> answer file. To make the required changes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Open the unattend.xml answer file in the <strong>Windows System Image Manager<\/strong> which is installed with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/downloads\/en\/details.aspx?FamilyID=0AEE2B4B-494B-4ADC-B174-33BC62F02C5D\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Windows Automated Installation Kit<\/a> (WAIK).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Add the component <strong>amd64_Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup_neutral<\/strong> to the <strong>Specialize<\/strong> pass (use the x86 version if not using Windows 7 64-bit).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Find the <strong>Themes \\ ThemeName<\/strong> entry.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Add the Aero theme name you wish to use &#8211; use just the main part of the filename (see the Windows Theme folder screenshot above). For the standard Windows 7 theme the value is &#8216;<strong>aero<\/strong>&#8216;.<figure><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/UnattendFileThemeName.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Unattend.xml ThemeName Entry\" width=\"518\" height=\"250\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-494\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/UnattendFileThemeName.png\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/UnattendFileThemeName.png 647w, https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/UnattendFileThemeName-300x145.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 518px) 100vw, 518px\" \/><\/a><\/figure><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Save the unattend.xml file and deploy!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Overview An issue I saw a number of times at customers was that the Windows 7 Aero theme was not enabled after deployment. I saw this numerous times in early workshops and pilots for customers and completely forgot about it until I saw the question asked again a few weeks ago. So here is a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[22,62,21,6],"class_list":["post-488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-deployment","tag-aero","tag-deployment","tag-unattend-xml","tag-windows-7"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100123,"href":"https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions\/100123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autoitconsulting.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}