I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to post this, so move it if necessary.

I did the following:

1. Installed the replacer.
2. Installed the unlocked uxtheme.dll file
3. replaced the windows/system32/uxtheme.dll file with the downloaded, unlocked one.

After I did all this, I restarted the computer, and when it booted it kept prompting me with the message,
 "The Application or DLL C:\WINDOWS\system32\UxTheme.dll is not a valid windows image. Please check this against your installation diskette."

Windows starts, but all I see is the wallpaper, no start menu, no toolbar, no icons, and I can't do anything except for Task Manager. How can I reverse what I did, or fix it.

I did manage to get safe mode working, but only with the command prompt.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

After thinking about it some more, I think I know what happened, the uxtheme.dll file was not unzipped when I replaced the windows one with it. Any suggestions on how to fix my problem?

I can't just go back in and replace it with the old Windows one because I can't get windows to work, because it doesn't recognize what i put in there as a valid image so nothing shows up.

I've already asked a lot of "so-called" experts, and none of them have been able to help me so if any of you can, I will be in awe of your all powerful skills.

Welcome to Crystal XP

Don't worry topher0805 , the problem is not very big and can be solved easily (atleast I think that).The 'uxtheme.dll file' which you have replaced Windows' original file might not working properly , this may have disable the windows theme service.

What you need to do is to get the original uxtheme.dll back to the '%systemroot%\Windows\System32\' folder,to do so,first you need the original dll file you can get one from here.Start your Windows XP in Safe-Mode , after login you may not be able to view your explorer correctly but you can run the 'Task Manager' even then , press Ctrl+Alt+Del to open it , now go to 'File->New task' and type explorer and click 'OK' button , now you will be able to navigate through your files. Just replace the patched uxtheme.dll file with the original one by using Replacer

Good Luck

Topic to be moved