How to Disable Aero Glass Border Frame in Windows Live Messenger (WLM) in Windows Vista and 7?
If you are using Windows Live Messenger (WLM) under Windows Vista or 7, you might have noticed that it uses Windows Aero glass theme to draw window border frame, titlebar buttons, etc. The older versions of WLM didn’t use Aero UI in the window, they used to come with their own simple and clean UI.
If you miss the good old GUI in WLM and want to get it back, you can get it by turning Aero theme off in Windows but that’s not a perfect solution as it’ll affect the whole system look. Then what to do? Don’t worry, here is the ultimate solution.
Today in this tutorial, we are going to share a small and easy to use registry trick to disable Aero glass border in Windows Live Messenger.
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Following are 2 screenshots which will show you the difference between WLM UI before and after using the registry trick:
Before Registry trick (Default):
After Registry trick:
So without wasting time, lets share the trick:
1. Type regedit in RUN or Start Menu search box and press Enter. It’ll open Registry Editor.
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2. Now go to following key:
If you are using 32-bit (x86) edition of Windows, go to following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Live\Messenger
If you are using 64-bit (x64) edition of Windows, go to following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows Live\Messenger
3. In right-side pane, create a new DWORD AeroWindowFrameEnabled and set its value to 0 to disable Aero glass border.
4. If you want to restore Aero glass border, simply change the value of DWORD to 1 or delete it.
PS: If you don’t want to modify Windows Registry manually and want a ready-made registry script to do the task automatically, just download following ZIP file, extract it and run the appropriate REG file. It’ll ask for confirmation, accept it:
I love the way this looks. Though I seem to have the problem that when its changed to non-aero, I can’t seem to move the window anywhere around the screen. Do you know why? Thanks in advance.
…how ’bout “How to ENABLE Aero Glass Border Frame from a MAXIMIZED WINDOW”…..I like AERO GLASS BORDER FRAME when I maximize any programs from my windows 7 laptop not just a plain borders…..notify me how to do this…thnx….:3
Hello friend, I am Brazilian and I have a serious problem with my WLM, sometimes when I click on the taskbar to open my Messenger, the screen it is all black, either of the contacts, is the conversation, i have to restart it, do not know how can you help me?
^^ Most probably a graphics card driver problem. Try to update the driver.
This is a nice trick but I am using the classic theme in windows 7 and I have the classic title bar, if I use this trick it looks like the screenshot after the trick but I can not move my messenger around the screen. Any Ideas? I know it is ment for aero but I think the screenshot looks better than the classic theme.