Aero O Aero..

clean installed vista on my laptop. which accounts for my lack of activity online for the past couple of days.
and after 1 full day of headaches trying to get all the drivers and stuff installed properly, i found out that windows aero is not working.
yay.
like seriously what's the point of vista ultimate without Aero Glass? No nice features. no flip 3d, no dreamscene. :(
checked the web and found out that my integrated graphics card is too old to support.

Q3: Is Intel providing WDDM drivers for Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 (Intel GMA 900) on Intel 915 Express chipset-based platforms?
A3: Intel will provide support for WDDM drivers beginning with the Intel® 945 Express chipset family and beyond. See question 5 below for a detailed explanation of WDDM support on Intel® 915 Express chipset-based platforms. However, Windows Vista is supported on the Intel® 865G, 915G Express desktop chipsets and 852/855GM mobile chipsets running XPDM (XP Display Driver Model) driver included on the Windows Vista install media. Windows Vista will install on these platforms, but advanced features such as Windows Aero will not be enabled as XPDM drivers do not support Windows AERO.

then yesterday my vista decided to be annoying and gave me a BSOD everytime it shuts down when its on battery.
luckily i met up with davis yesterday and he helped me unchecked the restart automatically checkbox when there's a system failure. (yeah my vista BSODed and refused to shut down after that) It's some interrupt problem, which davis says its most likely due to a problem with the installation of some drivers.
i ended up clean installing vista again this morning till about 4am, and this time, when i inserted the application restore disk that came with my laptop, i unchecked like almost everything besides the sound and video drivers.
Now it's okay, so i'm happy contented despite the lack of aero. trying to download my stuff now, the nice gadgets and redundant software like webshots that davis is nagging at me to uninstall. oh and i have yet to figure out how to set up my bluetooth here too. suspect the bluetooth driver on the application restore cd is crashing vista, so i shall search around for it. (btw, hp site is impossible when it comes to finding drivers )



I like the way it looks, especially on widescreen. pretty sleek huh? though i think everyone would agree that my fugly laptop sticker spoils everything.



Weijie says that there's an external graphics card by nvidia though. Very gien to buy it, though its kind of dumb to buy a usb drvien graphics card that you have to plug in just to see Aero. lol