The visual effects portion tries to apply the effects settings by altering the default user registry hive. I already mentioned this before, but I’ll say it again: it does NOT work. I’ve already tried this multiple times.
The problem is that when new user profile is created, the visual effects settings are applied based on the DWORD Value name DefaultValue from the various registry keys found in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VisualEffects. The child keys on that registry location corresponds to the item on the checkbox list under System -> Advanced system settings -> Performance Settings -> Visual Effects tab. It WILL override all the visual effect settings you put in on the default user registry hive.
The DefaultValue is set during the Windows install phase when Windows setup runs the performance assessment, which normally ends up being 0x1 (Hex) or 1 (Dec) with recent systems.
To apply the visual settings (only works for new profile creation), you need to set the DefaultValue DWORD within the various registry keys (ex. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VisualEffects\DragFullWindows for “Show windows contents while dragging”) you wish to have it disabled to 0. This way, any new profile created will have the desired effect settings. I set it all to 0 except for FontSmoothing to keep ClearType fonts.