ATI2010 - Disable 'Aero' style windows in XP

Hello Dan64,

I understand the question and will do everything possible from my side to give you a clear explanation.

Unfortunately it’s not possible to change GUI of the program. The only modifications is ability to change programs’ fonts from Tools -> Options -> Appearance -> Fonts.

I will create a special request regarding your feedback and most probably GUI changes will be possible in the next version of the program.

Let me know if you have further questions.

Thank you.

Did anything ever come of this request? I am running True Image 2011, build 6597 on Windows XP SP3 (Windows Classic Theme) on my primary machine. I have a Core2 Duo processor running at 2.66 GHz with a fast nVidia Video Card (GeForce 6600GT, AGP 8x though) but the system is a little dated so it only supports DirectX 9.0c. I turn off all "fancy" display enhancements because I want maximum performance. Everything else runs with great speed but the True Image 2011 window operates VERY slowly (I'm guessing due to the AERO styling and it does not obey my general display preferences). Dragging the window around by the title bar is slow and even moving the mouse cursor around on the True Image windows is a slow, stuttering kind of motion. I would really like to get rid of the AERO styling. As it has been almost 2 years since Dmitry's posting, it would be nice if Acronis had put in some kind of option for this.

Hello. I have this problem with ATI Home 2011, on two computers running XP, the younger of which is rated as Windows 7 ready. The main user interface of ATI is annoyingly slow. It is persuading me to go back to ATI Home 2009. Hello Acronis, surely you have, or can put, a switch somewhere to disable the 'aero' feature?

It sounds like this is the same problem I have been complaining about for months (I previously started a thread describing jerky and slow mouse behavior). Nobody (even the techs at Acronis) were able to pinpoint what the problem is but I guess it is due to the new glitzy AERO appearance.

Obviously, there should be a way to turn this off and opt for a more basic interface so that those of us with older computers can continue to use the program without the machine grinding to a crawl!!

Doug

Here is the response I received from Acronis Customer Service to my request for the location of the switch to enable opaque mode for the Acronis interface:

"The first question is related to GUI of Acronis True Image Home 2011 and is related to the product design. Your valuable suggestion has been shared with the development team."

...which is a roundabout way of owning up to the lack of such a facility.

For the record here is the checklist of respects in which (by my lights) ATI 2011 is inferior to ATI 2009, which I have recently sent to Acronis following protracted e-mail exchanges with Customer Service:

(i) the main user interface is slower, mouse movements are sluggish and jumpy; there is no way to change the display mode of the main ATI Home 2011 window from transparent to opaque.
(ii) in the main window (with list of backups showing) the small backup windows do not render properly but are cut off in the middle of the ‘Backup task’ button.
(iii) there is no way to change the priority of a backup while it is running
(iv) there is no System Tray icon for a running Acronis process. This means that for a background process (any process not started manually from the main user interface) there is no visual evidence that the process is running (except very briefly at the start and end of a process).
(v) during backup with the main window showing, there is a single progress bar whereas ATI Home 2009 shows two, one for the current process, the other for the total of all process being chained (including e.g. a validation task due to run after a backup task). This makes it harder to tell in ATI Home 2011 how much longer the total process may take. (Both versions of ATI Home – 2009 and 2011 – give hugely inflated estimates of the time a process will take, especially during the beginning of the process.)

I do not know how many of these backward steps had already been taken by ATI Home 2010, as I abandoned that even more quickly because it failed on both my XP computers.

This is clearly a case where more is worse. The very oldest versions of True Image worked just fine. Operation was very straightforward and the program performed briskly. TI2009 was the last of such versions and, even then, it was getting unnecessarily complicated and fat. The GUI change that started with TI2010 seems to have been a disaster. I have understood much more about usability since my son has gone into that field and it is apparent that Acronis really needs some usability engineers to clean up the muddle.

Doug

Has anyone ever gotten a straight answer on this? I am running TI home 2011PP on 2 computers. One has win 7 and runs fine the other is win xp and I am having the exact same problems as described above. The hardware on the XP machine is more than adequate for the program. My question now becomes, can I convert one license back to TI 2009? I would think they would build the software to fall in line with windows settings. Seems pretty silly, since this thread first started almost 2 years ago! Any help is greatly appreciated.

grb813: I think there was a straight answer on this thread - but it dates from 15 December 2009 (from Dmitry, above - the second post in the threadl). But I received a confirmation in May 2011 (see my post of 12 May, three posts above this one) that confirmed for me that this feature of the GUI had not been changed. Dmitry might like to tell us what he meant by 'version' here? (Would stubbornly loyal upgraders have to wait for ATI Home 2012 to get back a feature present in ATI Home 2009, even as an option?)
I'll add one credit to Acronis: I did get my money returned for the upgrade to ATI Home 2011, without question. I am comfortably back with the 2009 version, but once I upgrade to Windows 7 from XP I am expecting to use the built-in Windows backup only, now that it includes image backups as well as file-level backups.
My guess is that Acronis as a company, seeing that Microsoft is taking away some of its market, is now more focused on the big business installation than on the humble home user. (But I don't regard that as an excuse for the usability defects noted above.) Others may know better.