Hello everyone,

I am having a problem that I can not seem to remedy: I am not able to change the look of the start menu, and task bar. It always has that plain, bleak appearance of Windows of old.

It started after I installed SP3 (when it first came out), which caused Style XP to not work anymore, which left me with the Windows Classic look, so, I just set the appearance back to XP, but the start menu, and task bar remained the same. I decided to deal with it for as long as I could, but now it has come to the point to where I can't stand it anymore. So, I patched the uxtheme.dll file, slapped a spiffy new .msstyle on, and lo and behold, the aforementioned didn't change. Then I came across the Crystal Clear Bricopack hoping that it would solve my problems, but nope, it sure didn't.

If anyone could help me with this I would be most grateful!

Hi Solidity !

The Bricopacks should patch the uxtheme.dll and Visual-Styles should work, make sure that your theme-service is started.

Thanks for the input, Breakfastclub. I tried doing what you said, but it was already set to automatic. I tried disabling it, applying it, then setting it back to automatic, but nothing. I tried stopping it altogether and then starting it again, but nothing. I then tried restarting the service, but nothing. I've tried re-patching the uxtheme.dll file with UXTender plenty of times, but it didn't seem to work. Bah. This is getting to be real irritating. The last thing I would want to have to do is a fresh install of XP to fix the problem.  

This is what it looks like with Crystal Clear enabled.

I finally got it to work after I tried patching the system with UXTender in safe mode. I booted in safe mode, restored, re-booted in safe mode again, and then patched. I then repeated it once more, and I guess it worked. Woot!

Glad you solved your problems
Enjoy the themes again!