I don't see how any driver or hardware problem in the graphics could result in the pause only when opening or closing windows, whereas maximising and minimising is not affected.
Well, when you consider that Aero uses hardware acceleration for its effects, and Win7 uses the GPU to accelerate other processing, and Win7 has made changes to the way it stores each window in vram on the graphics card to accelate it, you can see how the vid
card and driver are heavily involved here. Add to this the fact that many people seem to find the issue resolved when Aero is switched off, I think the vid card and driver need serious consideration here.
However Win7 involves the graphics hardware and software, surely the animation is the same for opening/maximising and closing/minimising? What is Win7 doing differently when closing a window as opposed to minimising it?
For one thing, it is allocating vram to the window in the graphics card and adding it to the load the card is handling. It is not just about the visual animation, but about how Win7 uses the GPU and vram to handle windows, processing and applications in general.
Minimizing the window does not remove the object from vram and is very different to actually beginning a task. This is not just about animation, burt may affect it if the vid card is dealing with more than just the animation at the time.
Also, a broken vid driver can result in things happening that shouldn't. That's what we are dealing with here, something that shouldn't happen. To suggest that if it shouldn't happen it must not be happening is a position you can take, but then you should be
happy as logically you must not have a problem.
This is can be a complex area, but I think you are over analysing it. Just TRY IT and see. If it doesn't help, then at least you've properly installed your vid drivers as you should do which is not a bad thing. If it does help, great. Isn't this the simple
way of answering your questions?
Also, Google is your friend. The way Win7 uses graphics cards is hardly short on documentation and analysis. You can read till kingdom come on this subject if you like, but it will be far quicker just to install your drivers properly and see the results for
yourself. It can't hurt to install the drivers properly can it? Why do you want to avoid doing such?