I know my Calculus, it says Vista - Aero + Guild Wars = Fun

Here's my story...I've got Vista home premium. With Aero enabled, guild wars works smashingly in both windowed and full-screen modes. The minute I turn off aero, things get a little screwy. Full-screen is still ok, but windowed produces the following effect whenever I right click to open a context menu, or hover over a start menu item to bring up a bubble, etc.

That's fine, I've dealt with it and avoided it. Except today comes along, and suddenly the effect is permanent I've rebooted, I've reinstalled graphics drivers. The only things different today is I installed that fancy vista "performance" pack that MS released

So basically, I have to go back to using the molasses-inducing aero, or play full screen...neither of which are friendly options to me /sigh

You "only" installed the performance pack, eh?

Try uninstalling it.

thanks for the reply, tried that without effect. BUT the problem is now solved. For anyone curious, I did the following technical and obvious maneuver:

Step 1: Drag the start menu to the right side of the screen

Step 2: Drag it back to the bottom

/confused

But I won't complain. The problem isn't completely erased, it's just back to appearing only situationally as it did before rather than being a permanent blockade to playing the game

So. It still works fine WITH Aero?

Yup, with Aero turned on the graphics glitch never shows up. With Aero off (ignoring the recent permanence), the glitch appears whenever some bubble or context menu is shown. And the glitch goes away once that bubble of menu goes away. Here's a series of screens showcasing it

GW with Aero off, No bubbles or Menus Displayed

I Right Click, things glitch

I Hover Over to get a Popup Bubble, things glitch

I turn Aero back on, and never a glitch


I've told ArenaNet about it, but they merely reply back with "Vista isn't a supported OS, bye". I don't have this issue with any other 3D game in windowed more, so at least to me it seems a GW-localized phenomenon. It would be nice if someone else has had this occur, but I haven't found that person yet heh.

So is there a reason to turn off Aero?

Performance.

OK, I've experienced this on Ultimate.

It seems to be a RAM allocation issue. Vista is designed to run with Aero. Disabling it is very interesting in effect.

Post your system specs and I'll try to see if I can offer some answers...

Happy to do so.

Vista Home Premium
C2D E6600
2GB RAM
8800GTS 640MB
and other less important components


And yes, the reason I disable Aero is for performance. Not for the OS, but for other programs that currently don't work well with it enabled (involving graphics-based functions taking 10-100 times longer with it enabled)

Leigh your a fffer aren't you? It's obvious with your bar. ;P

Yeah, I'm stuck at 18 titles maxed so I had to start on the one(s) that I have no chance of ever maxing