Get Aero in Vmware

[Namronia]

install vmware 6 final, make a new vm, choose "longhorn (experimental)" (NOT VISTA!) and you can install early builds of longhorn, the only one thats works for me was the 5048, heres the screen:




but i think the 5112 and 52xx should work too, but my grapicadapter isnt the best


greetz

[Vista Ultimate R2]

Yes, I remember getting it to work on 5048 in both VMware and VPC, though it's pretty buggy and slow. You can enable the "Experimental 3D support" in VMware - while that doesn't give you Aero on Vista final as it only emulates a DirectX 8.1 card, you do notice differences like being able to play the games that come with Vista with hardware acceleration ie they play smoothly, which they don't in VMware normally.

[Namronia]

yep, it doesnt work at the final


but for me this version wasnt slow, it was really fast!!!

as fast as a real 5048 on a real pc with aero can be

[stealth]

yeah i hate 5048, worst longhorn build of them all.
i got glass partly working in vmware on 4074, including taskbar and some parts of the window. but yeah its too buggy vmware to get it working right

[hounsell]

5048 is the easiest to get aero working on. Personally, i prefer the alternate buttons for 5048 though. I think that 5048 has a worse reputation than it deserves. Admittedly, its lacking in features, but its stable and the Aero works on the most machines.

[___]

wasn't 5048 the build microsoft really tried to keep quiet and stopping sites from having screenshots?

[Peteski]

5048 is the easiest to get aero working on. Personally, i prefer the alternate buttons for 5048 though. I think that 5048 has a worse reputation than it deserves. Admittedly, its lacking in features, but its stable and the Aero works on the most machines.

if you look at the screenshot then it doesnt have blur meaning that its pure png transparency, thats why so many people got it working so easily. there wasnt the px shader 2 requirement that was a necessity in later vista builds (5308+).

[Vista Ultimate R2]

Yes, they said there were things in it that they hadn't yet patented I think, which is why they wanted to keep it quiet. It was the first build released for a year - 4074 was handed out at WinHEC 2004, and then there was nothing until 5048 (now on the new code base, of course) at WinHEC 2005 - obviously they couldn't keep it that quiet as they gave copies to all the conference attendees, maybe they realised after they gave it out that there was still something not patented?

[Namronia]

no, in the 5112 and 5231 it says (dxdiag):

DIRECTX 9.0c

(hardware support, NOT software) but it hasnt enough memory...

so its real aero

[empireum]

no, in the 5112 and 5231 it says (dxdiag):

DIRECTX 9.0c

(hardware support, NOT software) but it hasnt enough memory...

so its real aero

VMware says 6.0 only supports a subset of the DirectX 9 features, so I dare doubt that.

[Namronia]

but why doesnt it work with later betas?

[doggy]

5048 allways crash if I enabled DWM. Only the startbar is Transparent. 5112 works full with Glass in VM 6.

[hounsell]

5048 allways crash if I enabled DWM. Only the startbar is Transparent. 5112 works full with Glass in VM 6.

Even when i enabled glass in 5048, i never made the start bar transparent. It only looked like Namronia's screenshot at the start. But in 4074, in VMWare, i only got it and the sidebar transparent. on enabling full DWM, the windows wouldn't be displayed, and I would have to reboot the vm.

[Namronia]

if you have the "full" dwm in 4074 itll crash, its not on the vm