Desktop Window Manager
WindowBlinds
Monday, November 3, 2008 by Phil Swinney | Discussion: Windows Vista
Question: Does one NEED to allow Desktop Window Manager to run under Vista whenWindowBlinds does basically the same thing? With WindowBlinds active and switching off DWM through the task manager, I notice no difference after the screen winks out and returns. DWM uses so much computer resources vs. WindowBlinds 6.3. Is it absolutely necessary to allow this resource hog to run?
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Reply #1 Friday, June 5, 2009 6:39 PM
I believe that DWM is necessary for most of Vista's special effects: blurred transparency (idk if windowblinds uses its own method to do that now), window animations/transitions, win key + tab 3d window switching, dreamscene (maybe?), window previewing (when hovering over taskbar items), etc. If you don't need or use these things, then I don't think there's any problem with disabling DWM although it may break some programs that use it. In fact, you can't run DWM without a DX9 gfx card anyway, so it's automatically disabled for those systems.