Monday, September 9, 2013

How to Disable Aero Shake in Windows 8 Home Edition





Depending on how you work, Aero Shake is either a somewhat handy or somewhat annoying feature. It minimizes all the other open windows on the desktop when any given window is wiggled with the mouse. In How to Disable Aero Shake in Windows 8 we looked at using gpedit to disable Aero Shake in Windows 8 Pro and Enterprise. Windows 8 Home Edition, known by Microsoft as Windows 8, doesn't include gpedit, but fear not. You can still disable Aero Shake in Windows 8 with a simple registry hack.

This guide requires editing the Windows Registry. Please take all the caution required and make sure you understand the risks involved. We're going to add a new registry key and value. If you're comfortable with using the command line, jump to the end of this article for the command line method. Now let's get to it.

Move the mouse all the way into the lower left hand corner of the screen, right click, and select Run.



Type regedit and click OK.


Expand the registry tree to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows


Add a new registry key called Explorer by right clicking on Windows, selecting New, clicking Key and naming the new key Explorer.


It should look something like the following.


Add a new value to the Explorer key by right clicking on Explorer, selecting New, clicking DWORD (32-bit) Value, and naming it NoWindowMinimizingShortcuts.


The new value should look like this.


Right click on the newly created NoWindowMinimizingShortcuts value, change the Value data to 1, and click OK.


When complete, the registry should look like the following.


Restart Windows 8.


Now you can shake your windows to your hearts content without minimizing anything.

Command Prompt Method

The registry key and value can also be added by by using the reg add command at the command prompt. Depending on your level of experience you may find this method easier, but it's also easier to mess up. Nevertheless, here it is.

Move the mouse all the way into the lower left hand corner of the screen, right click, and select Command Prompt (Admin).


Type reg add hkcu\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer /v NoWindowMinimizingShortcuts /t REG_DWORD /d 0x1 at the command prompt and press enter.


After rebooting Aero Shake should be disabled.

1 comment:

  1. Tried it. Doesn't work. Checked thoroughly to see that registry setting is exactly as shown above. Thanks anyway.

    ReplyDelete