Automate Windows 7 Ease of Access Setting "Turn off unnecessary animations"

Question

I'm trying to find a away to automatically enable/disable a setting in Windows 7:

From Category view:

• Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Ease of Access Center\Make the computer easier to see

From Icon view:

• Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Ease of Access Center\Make the computer easier to see

The setting:

• Turn off all unnecessary animations (when possible)

Some context:

This seems to be a way to disable the animations on Microsoft Office 2013 which are causing an Excel Add-in I wrote to behave sluggishly (the add-in itself does graph interactivity and animation, which chugs badly in Office 2013 with the new graphics hardware accelerated animations). I've tried the within Office setting to disable the animation, but it didn't have any effect after Office restart or reboot, and others have also reported this. Changing settings in the Ease of Access Center or the visual performance settings (Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Performance Information and Tools > Adjust Visual Effects > Animate controls and elements inside windows) are the best way to remove the animations. The Ease of Access Center method I'm asking for help with doesn't require elevated privileges and works instantly, so if there is a way to automate it, it should be more seemless.

In the end I'd like to toggle the setting from VBA or VB.Net Microsoft Office Add-Ins, but I don't care what form the solution takes (batch file, Windows API, VBS script, PowerShell, etc.) since it should be easy to implement from the add-in. If it comes down to Auto-It style mouse-click automation, I'd rather just give the user instructions and pop up the explorer window for them.

Thanks for any helpful ideas!

Answer 1

"This stuff is also controlled via the computer properties -> advanced-> performance-> visual effect option. If you set it to best performance, all the stuff you want turned off is turned off.

Unfortunately this changes a whole bunch of registry values but if we just narrow down on the stuff you want, there are 2 registry values involved:

HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\UserPreferencesMask

This is a reg_binary value. Change this value from 9E 2C 07 80 12 00 00 00 to 9E 2C 07 80 10 00 00 00 .

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VisualEffects\VisualFxSetting

The VisualEffects key doesn't exist by default. There are a bunch of values that can be defined under here but the only one that really matters is VisualFxSettings. Set this to 2 to disable a lot of the animations and also to tick "Turn off all unnecessary animations (when possible)" ."

Quote from -> HERE

Run the following powershell, reboot, and you'll be good to go.

PS C:\> Push-Location
PS C:\> Set-Location "HKCU:\Control Panel\Desktop\"
PS HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop> Set-ItemProperty . -Name UserPreferencesMask -Value ([byte[]](0x9E,0x2C,0x07,0x80,0x10,0x00,0x00,0x00))
PS HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop> Pop-Location
PS C:\>    
PS C:\> Push-Location
PS C:\> Set-Location HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VisualEffects\
PS HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VisualEffects> New-ItemProperty . VisualFxSetting -Value 2
PS HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VisualEffects> Pop-Location