Perhaps because I’m a designer, one of the things I like best about Windows 7 is the Aero interface inherited and improved from Windows Vista. If you’re not familiar with the term “Aero” in this context, it’s the name of the Windows theme that gives your windows translucent borders, that sort-of glassy interface. When you install Windows 7, so long as your computer is adequately powerful, the Aero interface presents itself. Personally, I think it looks much nicer than the Mac OS interface, but that’s just my opinion.

Aero offers another feature called Aero Peek that lets you see a thumbnail of your window contents when you hover your mouse pointer over its icon on the Taskbar (as shown in the illustration). But, what if Aero gets replaced by the more blasé Windows 7 Basic interface? In that case, your window borders become solid, your Taskbar loses its transparency, Aero Peek disappears, and you experience a variety of other disappointing interface losses. This is unavoidable if your PC is not up to the task, older PCs and less powerful ones, such as a typical netbook, can’t use the Aero interface.

To know if your PC can run the Aero interface, check the Windows Experience Index. You can find this by right-clicking the Computer option on your Start Menu and choosing Properties. You will see a Rating label in the System section of the Properties window. The rating is shown as a numerical value, and must be at least 3.0 or higher to support Aero. If your machine supports Aero, continue on to see how you can enable it.

I noticed one day last week that Aero was missing, and the Basic interface was being used instead. To fix it, I tried the following methods to reactivate it. One of these may work for you:

• Begin by right-clicking the desktop and choosing the Personalize option. Try just clicking on one of the Aero Themes. Although this didn’t work for me, it may be all you need to do.
• Type aero into the search box at the bottom of the Start Menu. A list of matching objects on your computer will appear above the search box. You may see an option under the Control Panel to “Find and fix problems with transparency and other visual effects.” If you do see it, choose this option to open the “Aero – Troubleshoot computer problems” wizard. Step through the wizard and, if it can, the wizard will correct the issue or tell you what’s wrong. In my case, it didn’t fix the issue but told me to disable programs that used a “mirror interface.” Hm? What’s that? And what programs use a “mirror interface?”

A “mirror interface” is a special display adapter that dumbs down the graphics for use by programs such as remote desktop software. Examples might include VNC, LogMeIn, Remote Desktop Connection, and others. I decided I could live without this display adapter for the time being to see if I could restore Aero. So, I tried this option:

• Type device manager into the search box at the bottom of the Start Menu and press the Enter key. Expand the Display adapters portion of the list in the Device Manager window. Look for any adapter that includes in its title, “Mirror Driver.” In my case, it was a LogMeIn Mirror Driver. Right click the offending option and choose Uninstall from the pop-up menu. When your finished doing this, reboot your computer. Aero should come back upon reboot, but if not, try the first bullet option above to re-invoke it.

LogMeIn may need its mirror driver back someday, but I’ve since tested it without the driver installed and LogMeIn still works (without reinstalling the mirror driver). So, I think I’ve won this battle. I’ll update this article if I encounter any additional issues with Aero.

Craig Samson

There are four editions of Windows 7 of interest to consumers.

1. Starter, comes pre-loaded on netbooks
2. Business, people who need to get remote access
3. Home Premium, most of the features from the other editions
4. Ultimate, full features of all other editions

Here are some of the key features of Windows 7.

• New Taskbar: In Windows 7, the taskbar is taller and is now a place where you can permanently “pin” the icons of frequently used programs anywhere along its length, and in any arrangement you choose, similar to Apple’s dock feature. Windows 7 takes the concept further; for each running program, hovering over its taskbar icon pops up a small preview screen showing a mini view of that program and every one of its open windows. If you mouse over a window in the preview screen, it appears at full size on your desktop and all other windows on the desktop become transparent—part of a feature called Aero Peek. Click on the window and it comes up, ready for use. You can even close windows from these previews, or play media in them.
• Use Aero Peek any time to see your empty desktop, with open windows reduced to virtual panes of glass. To do this, you just hover over a small rectangle at the right edge of the taskbar.
• Taskbar icons also provide Jump Lists—pop-up menus listing frequent actions or recent files used.
• Desktop: A feature called Snap allows you to expand windows to full-screen size by just dragging them to the top of the screen, or to half-screen size by dragging them to the left or right edges of the screen. Another feature, called Shake, allows you to make all other windows but the one you’re working on disappear by simply grabbing its title bar with the mouse and shaking it several times.
• File organization: In Windows Explorer, the left-hand column now includes a feature called Libraries. Each library—Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos—consolidates all files of those types regardless of which folder, or even which hard disk, they live in.
• Networking: Windows 7 allows you to see all available wireless networks by clicking on an icon in the taskbar. Home Groups allow you to easily share files among Windows 7 PCs on your home network.
• Touch: Some of the same kinds of multitouch gestures made popular on the iPhone are now built into Windows 7. But these features need a special type of touch screen that goes beyond what are on most desktops today.
• Speed: Properly configured, Windows 7 runs faster than Vista. Start-up and restart times are improved.
• Nagging: Microsoft has consolidated most of the security alerts from the lower-right system tray into one icon.
• System Requirements: Needs newer or beefier hardware than traditional XP machines. The netbooks can run Starter Edition, which lacks some of the powerful graphics effects. A 32-bit PC will need at least one gigabyte of memory, 16 gigabytes of free hard-disk space and a graphics system that can support Microsoft technologies called “DirectX 9 with WDDM 1.0″ and a processor with a speed of at least one gigahertz. A 64-bit PC will require at least two gigabytes of memory and 20 gigabytes of free hard disk space. In either case, you should double the minimum memory specification.

John Boyd