I work in IT and I have experience that only very small amount of system need to change their HDD/SSD or CPU in several years. Your post is one of the common false problems. If you are not a fan of the Aero theme and instead prefer the Windows 8 look, you could always use Winaero's beautiful theme for Classic Shell on Windows 8.1. If you are using StartIsBack, installing the visual styles mentioned above is enough to get glass working, however, StartIsBack is commercial and does not include as many customizations as Classic Shell.įor any questions or technical support related to Aero Glass for Windows 8.1/Windows 8, ask in the Windows 8 section of the MSFN forum.
From the skin tab, you could use the Windows Aero skin or the Windows 8 skin (depending on whether you want rounded corners or square).
How to bring back the glass into the Classic Start Menu Download some theme resources from this web page. Aero Glass itself includes a feature to load theme resources.The above themes have both variations - rounded as well as square corners.
Read this article if you are not sure how to do this: How to install and apply third party themes in Windows 8.1 Install UxStyle for Windows 8.1 or Windows 8 so you can install custom unsigned themes. To bring it back: Aero Glass on Windows 8 with the Classic Shell Start Menu - Looks like Windows 7, doesn't it? It does not give you back the Windows Aero visual style which was also changed in Windows 8 to have square corners and flat caption buttons in the title bar. How to bring back the glass into the Classic Start Menu How to bring back the full Windows 7 look to Windows 8ĭownloading and installing Aero Glass for Windows 8.1 or Windows will only give you back the glass effects that were removed from the Desktop Window Manager. Enter the email address there that you used for donation and the machine code which will be shown to you after installing Aero Glass. You can donate as well as generate a license for yourself after donating from this web page. The Windows 8.1 version of Aero Glass differs significantly from the Windows 8 version and the two are not compatible with each other so make sure you get the correct version.ĭownload Aero Glass for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 If you donate and get the license, then the symbols are automatically downloaded, so for most users, this will be the easier way. To function smoothly, Aero Glass requires the debug symbols for some Windows processes and DLLs to be downloaded from Microsoft's public symbol server. It is a paid app (the free version isn't really free, it occasionally shows a message requesting you to donate and displays a watermark on the Desktop). This week, version 1.0 of Aero Glass for Windows 8.1 also got released. Windows 8.1 made some big changes to the Desktop Window Manager again and 'BigMuscle' had to work hard again to re-implement everything and make his project work on Windows 8.1. After many months of development, version 1.0 of Aero Glass was released for Windows 8. We wrote about the project while it was still in its infancy. It was an enormous amount of work reviving glass for Windows 8. 'BigMuscle' reimplemented effects such as glass transparencies and blur using DirectX. He did so by hooking Desktop Window Manager (DWM.exe) functions. An ambitious developer, 'BigMuscle' who hangs around at the MSFN forum, tried to bring back Aero Glass when Windows 8 was released.