Software based compositing on windows 7

Question

This has been bothering me for ages. I have an oldish computer that I use just for internet etc..but it has an Intel GMA 900, so no aero. But how come if I remote desktop to it, it can have aero (using the software wddm) etc (EVEN over network). But I cant enable this software compositing while using it through its graphics card.

All I am saying is that over LAN, the aero is extremely smooth even though it is software compositing on an ancient Pentium 4. I even tried installing windows 7 in a Virtaulbox without any guest additions and graphics acceleration, and it worked perfectly.

My only question is that is there a way to enable this software compositing on windows 7 without RDP?

Answer 1

RDP doesn't send bitmaps across the network the way VNC, for example, does; instead it sends GDI commands, and leaves it up to the client how they will be rendered. If the machine hosting the RDP client can support Aero compositing, then you'll get compositing; if not, you won't. Either way, the RDP server host's graphics hardware is not involved, so what looks to you like software rendering actually isn't. And that, I'm afraid, is why you won't be able to get Aero compositing to work on the console of the machine in question, but only when you're RDPed into it from something with more capable graphics hardware.