If anybody on here has Windows Vista Home Basic and you want to enable Aero without using a 3rd party software, follow this:
Before I start, I need to point out that you must have administrator credentials for this to work.
First go to the start menu and type "regedit" and open it.
Navigate yourself to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM
Then when you are there you should see this:
Now for the trick, double click the "CompositionPolicy" registry entry and change the value to "2".
Double click the "Composition" registry entry and change the value to "1" (It should be "1" already, but this is just in case).
Now we have to manually restart the "Desktop Windows Manager" (DWM).
Now close the registry and open the Command Prompt by going to the start menu and typing "cmd" in the search box and opening it.
When it the loads up, type "net stop uxsms" (without the quotation marks).
Then when it has stopped the process, type "net start uxsms" (without the quotation marks).
If you followed the instructions properly, then you should now have enabled the Aero feature in Windows Vista Home Basic.
Have fun