akemin-dayo / VistaAlwaysGlass

Prevent Windows Vista from disabling Aero Glass transparency when windows are maximised! (… Yeah, I'm not creative with names.)

VistaAlwaysGlass

Prevent Windows Vista from disabling Aero Glass transparency when windows are maximised! (… Yeah, I'm not creative with names.)

I recently decided to dig out and install Windows Vista Ultimate on a virtual machine just for the nostalgia and remembered the age-old annoyance where Aero Glass's transparency would inexplicably disable itself if a window was maximised. (To this day, I still have no idea why Microsoft ever made that decision…)

Back in the day, this strange behaviour could just be patched out by way of a tool called "VistaGlazz" (by CodeGazer), but that software has since been lost to time as the developer's servers actually no longer host any files related to it — so even if you manage to dig out a copy of the installer from the Internet Archive (trust me, I tried this), the installer actually still fails due to it having to download files from the developer's server… which no longer hosts anything related to VistaGlazz.

As a result, I decided to figure out myself how to manually disable this annoying behaviour, and decided to share my findings/procedure here for others who may want to do the same.

※ DISCLAIMER: This is probably not the exact same method that VistaGlazz used, but the end result is the same as far as I can tell, so… I think it's fine. ;P

Installation instructions

This procedure has been tested to work on both 64-bit and 32-bit versions of Windows Vista Ultimate SP2, on both English and Japanese installations.

1. Download deepxw's Universal Theme Patcher (from "Download link 3") and use it to patch all of the listed DLLs.
   • ※ IMPORTANT: If you are using a 64-bit version of Windows Vista, you will need to run both the x64 (64-bit) and x86 (32-bit) versions of the patcher! (※ The first reboot prompt can be ignored — you only have to reboot once.)
2. Open a privileged cmd instance ("Run as Administrator") and take full ownership of aero.msstyles by running takeown /f "%SYSTEMROOT%\Resources\Themes\Aero\aero.msstyles" && icacls "%SYSTEMROOT%\Resources\Themes\Aero\aero.msstyles" /grant administrators:F.
3. Go to %SYSTEMROOT%\Resources\Themes\Aero\ in an Explorer window. This will be referred to as the System Aero Directory in this README from now on.
4. Make a backup copy of aero.msstyles, naming it aero.orig.msstyles.
5. Disable Aero by switching to the Windows Vista Basic theme.
6. Download and run xdelta UI.
   • If you are familiar with the xdelta CLI, feel free to use that instead.
7. For the patch, choose the flavour of VistaAlwaysGlass.xdelta that corresponds to the architecture of your Windows installation (64-bit or 32-bit).
8. For the source file, choose aero.orig.msstyles.
9. For the output file, just set the filename to aero.msstyles and save it somewhere where you have write permissions, like your home folder or Desktop.
   • ※ NOTE: It is also possible to directly replace the copy in the System Aero Directory in this step if you run xdelta with administrative privileges. If you choose to do this, skip the next step.
10. Once completed, just replace the aero.msstyles file found in the System Aero Directory with your patched copy.
11. Re-enable Aero and maximised windows should now remain transparent! (No reboot required ;P)

FAQ

• Help! I'm getting a "checksum mismatch" error when I try to patch the file!
  • Make sure you have Service Pack 2 installed. Earlier versions of Windows Vista have a slightly different aero.msstyles file.
  • Make sure you are using the correct patch corresponding to the architecture of your Windows installation (64-bit or 32-bit).
    • If you don't know which architecture you are using, open the Start Menu, right-click on Computer, and then click on Properties. The architecture of your Windows installation will be displayed under "System Type" in the window that opens.
  • If it still fails even after verifying the above things, please manually patch your aero.msstyles file using the instructions below, and then file an issue!
• Why do we have to use xdelta to patch aero.msstyles instead of simply just replacing it with a pre-patched copy? This just makes the process more complicated… ⊂⌒~⊃｡Д｡🍍)⊃
  • Simply redistributing the contents of aero.msstyles like that would be blatant copyright infringement.
  • Besides, given how this patch only changes one byte anyway… this also makes for a much smaller file size. ;P

How to manually patch aero.msstyles

1. Download and install NTCore Explorer Suite.
2. Run CFF Explorer and open %SYSTEMROOT%\Resources\Themes\Aero\aero.msstyles.
3. In the sidebar, go to "Resource Editor", then click on VARIANT → NORMAL.
4. Jump to offset 0x00023c43 (the blue arrow icon) and replace the FF with 00.
5. Save your patched aero.msstyles to a separate location (using "File" → "Save As…").
6. Follow the same instructions as above, but skip steps 6 and 7 and instead simply replace aero.msstyles with the one you just made.