Advertisement
Help Keep Boards Alive. Support us by going ad free today. See here: https://subscriptions.boards.ie/.
https://www.boards.ie/group/1878-subscribers-forum

Private Group for paid up members of Boards.ie. Join the club.
Hi all, please see this major site announcement: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058427594/boards-ie-2026

Black toolbars and windows problem from changing theme - Problem!!

  • 13-01-2009 01:58AM
    #1
    Africa
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,252 ✭✭✭


    I noticed a whileago that my Windows XP machine started up with a classic theme instead of my usual XP green theme.
    I hadn't bothered to change it back till recently, but upon changing it I got all black toolbars and windows. I should mention that when switching to the XP theme the preview did not include any sample of a window and when looking at the classic preview there was nothing but black with a tiny bit of white in the bottom righ corner. When I switched to the XP theme all of my windows, taskbars/toolbars went totally black. I can't seem to fudge my way through to the themes menu and get it to switch back at all. It seems to me that some required information is missing to display things correctly. All I can see when opening windows are some (not all) icons and the black box where there should be a window with text and stuff in it.

    Need to get into it ASAP to get to my project for college and get it going again!!

    Thanks


Comments

  • #2
    aidan_walsh
    Closed Accounts Posts: 17,208 ✭✭✭✭aidan_walsh


    Moved from Virus and Malware Removal, as I don't think that would be an issue here.


  • #3
    sceptre
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,607 ✭✭✭✭sceptre


    It doesn't look anything like the little inset in the middle of the attached pic by any chance?

    if it does, go back into display properties, go for the appearance tab and see if "Windows and buttons" is set to "windows xp style".

    Of course it could be so and the theme could still have been edited by the invisible gremgnomes but if the above is as it should be it's more likely to be a different problem if only on the basis of probability.


  • #4
    watty
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 32,460 ✭✭✭✭watty


    you can have "pretty" or "Reliable and Compatible"

    Some programs simply don't work on anything other than Windows Classic mode.

    Skins etc is a badly developed afterthought built on top of Windows default colours editing.

    For best reliablility and performance I ALWAYS set to Classic Win98/NT look and disable the Themes Service in Start | Run | services.msc

    I do have drop shadow on icon text as that seems to not break anything. However some Graphics drivers don't render it, which is odd.

    It sounds like you have lost some "jazzy" Themes/Skins files and/or permissions and that the aforementioned "evil" Themes service may not be running.


Advertisement
Advertisement