Warning: This involves editing your Windows Registry. Before you make any changes to your Windows Registry it would be a good idea, on the safer side, to backup your Windows Registry. If you don’t know how to backup your Windows Registry then read this article on how to backup Windows Registry first and then come back to read this article.

Since you know by now how to disable Windows Vista’s Aero color scheme, wouldn’t it be nice to have a little shortcut to turn on or turn off Vista’s Aero effect? Follow these steps to include a “Enable Aero” and “Disable Aero” on your desktop’s right-click context menu,

Step-1:

Click on the “Start” button and type “run” and press the Enter key.

Step-2:

On the “Run” dialog, type-in “regedit” and press the Enter key.

Step-3:

Windows will launch “Registry Editor”. Follow this key path to arrive at the “shell” key, HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\Shell

Step-4:

Right click on the “shell” key and then click on the “New” menu option and then click on “Key”. Windows will create a key below “shell” and will allow you to type a name for the key. Type-in “Enable Aero” and press Enter. You’ll have something like below,

Step-5:

Right click on the “Enable Aero” key and then choose “New” and then “Key”. Type-in “command” for the key name.

Step-6:

Click on the “command” key under “Enable Aero” on the left and then right-click on the “Default” key on the right pane and click “Modify…”.

Step-7:

On the “Edit String” dialog, type-in (or copy this) Rundll32 dwmApi #102 and then hit the OK button.

Step-8:

Right click on the “shell” key again and choose “New” and then “Key” and type-in “Disable Aero” for the key name.

Step-9:

Create a “command” key below “Disable Aero” as you’ve done on Step-5.

Step-10:

Choose the “Default” key on the right pane and then right click and “Modify” and enter Rundll32 dwmApi #104 on the “Edit String” dialog. Hit the OK button.

Now you should have “Enable Aero” and “Disable Aero” on your desktop’s right-click context menu, as you can see below,

Isn’t that a handy thing to have? If you have any questions regarding this please make sure to let us know in comments.

If you don’t enable/disable Aero effect quite often then just follow this article to disable the Aero effect with out messing up with the Windows Registry.

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