aerowindows-8-preview
Does anyone know how to disable Aero on Windows 8 (currently Release Preview)?
Note: Contrary to what many places mention, I believe this should still be possible, because you can see it during the installation process! (That is, if you press Shift-F10 at the appropriate stage in the installation, you'll see that Aero is disabled — the classic borders are there.) I just don't know how.
The best way to do this is to use the Group Policy editor. Go into the start menu, type in gpedit.msc, and hit enter. When it comes up, go into User Configuration -> Administratrive Templates -> Desktop.
In here you'll see a settings called "Turn off Aero Shake window minimizing mouse gesture". Set this to enabled and no more Aero Shake.
Here's a picture of the Group Policy Editor, with the setting highlighted:
Another option is to edit a key in the registry. If you don't have Group Policy Editor for some reason (lower end Windows 7 edition), this might be your only option. There's a downloadable reg file that will handle this automatically from the How-To Geek.
Create a batch file with the following content:
@echo off
sc interrogate uxsms | find "1062"
if %errorlevel%==0 goto :sc_start
sc stop uxsms
exit
:sc_start
sc start uxsms
exit
Executing it will alternatively turn Aero on and off. You can place it anywhere you like. AFAIK it does not need to be executed as Admin.
Best Answer
Navigate to Control Panel -> System -> Advanced system settings
Then click Performance -> Settings... Under Visual Effects, select "Adjust for best performance', then click Apply.
This will disable all visual effects associated with the old Aero theme.