The Problem: You Upgrade to R2, But Have No Aero Menus or Taskbar
The problem is that the Windows Aero Theme is missing.
All that you have is the old Windows Server 2008 / Vista Taskbar.
There is no sign of Microsoft's aero graphics; you get no Start orb and no see-through title
bars or menus.
What you want to see is Microsoft's wonderful glass aero theme with their glowing
graphics. The very same graphics that you see in Windows 7.
The easiest way to Personalize the Aero Themes is to right-click the Desktop
and select Personalize.
Plan B, Launch the Control Panel and navigate to
Appearance and Personalization.
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The word radical maybe a
bit strong, but the W2K8 R2 (Windows 7) taskbar clearly exhibits different behaviour
when accessing programs compared with W2K3 or Vista or XP.
Perhaps the change is like switching from a car with a shift change
gearbox to an automatic.
Some people hanker for the control of manual gear selection, while others accept
the efficiency of automatic changes.
The new taskbar philosophy is based around the program icon, it
helps to think of any individual documents as being combined with that main
icon. Observe in the screenshot
below how the Word for Windows icon appears to be glowing, this is because
the taskbar is trying to tell us that this program has open files. Furthermore, you can just about make
out 3 shadows to the right of the Word icon. When you click on the
this icon up comes a Jump List confirming that there are indeed 3 Microsoft Word
files in use, in this example: Tips, Shopping now and Finance.
Previews If you hover over a program icon which has open
files then you can see a preview, this is designed to save time when
searching for one of your many open documents. To get the most from
this new way of working embrace the Winkey +Tab technique, and use Flip 3-D
to cycle through a preview of each open program. As usual Microsoft
provides at least 3 ways of doing everything, and as usual, it's easy,
satisfying and fun to learn about these new features simply by exploring on
your own.
Pin to To get the most out of the new W2K8 R2 taskbar embrace the concepts of:
'Pin to ....' and 'Jump List'. Thus when you find one of your old
favorite programs, just right-click its executable and choose 'Pin to
taskbar'. As for Jump List, if you click on any non-glowing icon in the taskbar you
get a 'Jump List' with a 'Recent' or 'Frequent' menu showing you the last files
that
you used. Incidentally, one reason why the new taskbar behavior does
not give me any problems is that I still use Alt + Tab to check my open
files (See screenshot above right).
Fine-tuning the Taskbar Returning to the taskbar, the secret of success is to fine tune the icons
behavior; thus right-click the taskbar and select 'Properties'. For
instance, I prefer Small Icons, while Luddites like 'Mad' Mick choose the
'Taskbar button' option, which allows them to 'Never Combine' documents with
their parent program. I call them Luddites because they want to revert
to the old Vista ways of individual documents in the taskbar rather than embracing the new look and feel of the
W2K8 R2, but hey, it's a free country at least as far as the
W2K8 R2 taskbar is concerned.
Tip: If the taskbar does not exhibit the behavior you
expect, then right-click and select, 'Lock the taskbar', alternatively, try
removing the tick.
Tip: Widen the W2K8 R2 Taskbar. Providing there is
no tick next to 'Lock the taskbar', you can widen the band by dragging the
top upwards. However, you have to be firm, this does not seem to work
at first, but persevere. One reason would be you want the clock to display
the day of the week.
Deleting the Taskbar: My old friend 'Mad' Mick has been
experimenting with various alternative shells that effectively remove or
hide the W2K8 R2 taskbar. The default shell is explorer.exe but you
could change it (not recommended) with regedit. If you are going to do
this then it's best to get a third-party alternative shell.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\shell
Or for just one user here (you may need to add a Reg_SZ called shell):
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
In summary: W W2K8 R2's new taskbar technology displays a combination of the
executable icon together with any files that you launch from that program.
If an icon glows it means that program has open files, while if it does not
appear highlighted then the executable is inactive. Microsoft's mantra
is to keep both the taskbar and the notification area clear of clutter, and
they regard Vista's arrangement with one icon for the program and another
for its files as unnecessary.
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Find the Personalize Menu. The long way is to click on the
Start orb, select Control Panel, then navigate to Appearance and
Personalization.
Click on the theme to change.
You can change the background, click Desktop Background, select
the check box for the image that you want to use, and then click
Save changes.
Adjust the color of window borders. Click Window Color,
click the color that you want to use, adjust the intensity, and then
click Save changes.
Even modify the the sounds for your the theme. Click
Sounds, click an item in the Sound Schemes list, and then click OK.
Add or change your screen saver, click Screen Saver, click an
item in the Screen saver list, change any settings that you want to
change, and then click OK.
Please note: your modified theme will appear under My Themes as
an unsaved theme.
Footnote: As usual there is online support and ideas for custom
themes.
»
Troubleshooting
The Aero Graphics Desktop Experience
Call for the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. My idea is to
check if your graphics card supports Aero Graphics.
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