As the name implies, Windows Vista Home Basic will deliver only a basic user experience. For the Windows Vista family, Home Basic, is the baseline platform on which Microsoft has built the more
feature-rich versions of the operating system. And among the long list of characteristics that are missing from Windows Vista Home basic, Microsoft also enumerates the Windows Aero desktop experience.
Windows Vista Home Basic is designed to work on inferior system configurations, and as such, Windows Aero has been scrapped from the user interface options of this edition. For example, the Aero graphical user interface requires a card with support for DirectX 9 graphics, WDDM Driver, 128 MB of graphics memory (minimum, Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware and 32 bits per pixel).
Meanwhile, Home Basic will run on less pretentious configurations demanding only support for Super VGA graphics out of the graphic card. However, if you have the horsepower necessary to run Windows Aero, you can do so even on Windows Vista Home Basic.
This is just one of the many loopholes that Microsoft has let slip into Windows Vista. In order to enable Windows Aero in Vista Home Basic, enter "regedit" in the Search Box of the Start Menu. Enabling the Aero interface requires a registry hack, so be sure to backup the registry before you continue.
Make your way to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Windows > DWM registry key. Composition and Composition Policy are the two registry keys inside the DWM directory that you will need to edit. Set Composition to 1 and Composition Policy to 2.
Restart the Desktop Windows Manager Session Manager service in order to restart DWM. To do so, open a command prompt window with administrative privileges and type these commands: net stop uxsms and net start uxsms. Restart Windows Vista Home Basic and be ready to enjoy your new Windows Aero interface.
