Touhou 13-17 hates Aero Glass (and vice versa), so today I found a way to keep them both alive and working happily separated
anyone who plays Touhou 13-17 since its release, from 2011 until 2021 (release date of Touhou 18), will canonically experience the "color scheme has been changed to Windows Vista/7 Basic" error thing.
it disables DWM on Windows, which makes Aero disappear until you close the game. this case may have been saw as annoying but people choose to live along with it.
until today, if you are still on Windows Vista/7 (or maybe on windows 10 with DWM mod? idk), there's a way to "complain no more" to this software conflict.
in fact, the solution had been released since 2012, by Microsoft themselves (back then when they wasn't Microslop).
the solution was called "Desktops" by SysInternals, which can also be found in SysInternals suite.
- how does this work?
"Desktops" creates separate, virtual desktops instances in explorer.exe. These secondary desktops (2, 3, 4) run without DWM, meaning no Aero theme there.
You can launch Touhou 13-17 on desktop 2, 3, or 4, and the game runs perfectly fine. Meanwhile, your main desktop (desktop 1) keeps Aero Glass fully intact.
[!] REMINDER
for Touhou 14, please don't forget to minimize the game window before switching to other desktops. or maybe you will crash out when you found out the game has crashed.
Touhou 13 might require better handle actions, the furthest solution i've found is minimize it first (just like Touhou 14) and maximize another window before switching desktops. still, you are not expected to change desktops too frequently, or the game will crash (applies to Touhou 13-14 only).
but in Touhou 15, 16 and 17, you can handle it carefreely between your main desktop and your non-DWM desktops without needing to minimize or maximize another window. even switching desktops too frequently won't make any of them crash.