XP Theme gone - RESOLVED, but....

I tried System File Checker & the theme became available. But I would still like to know where such things are located. In the meantime, I will modify & save it so I can backup & store the settings.

I have a disk that messes up, so I do semi-regular chkdsk runs.

I now have Windows XP theme, but on the Display Properties, Appearance tab, the "Windows and buttons" pull-down window only lets me choose "Windows Classic style" -- "Windows XP style" is not available. The green Start button is gone [a 'windows' icon shows up], colors won't set, etc.

All this forces me to look at the old, boxy, windows 95 screen.

Does anyone know what file & location I can copy to get me the standard XP settings? I don't want to completely re-load. I DID try a restore point to a couple days ago, but that didn't help [didn't expect it to, but tried anyway]

BTW - I also had WORD crash; as it tried to open, it would error & ask me to send a report. But no matter what I chose, it would try to open again in a non-stop loop. A re-load OVER the existing installation did not fix it - had to uninstall WORD [I took out all of Office] & install anew. I don't want to do this for the OS.

Thanks

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Comments

Danman32

*.theme files usually located in windows\resources\themes

crabeater

Yea, I know about those, plus I can make changes & save it under a new name, but I am looking for the file that has the original Windows XP Theme so if this happens again [or at work] I can quickly replace it.
[Though the SFC.exe was a good method too]

Maybe it is like Windows shortcuts - Inherently concealed with almost no way to find what the target location / .exe is [put a shortcut to Word on your desktop & look at the properties to find the path it takes to open Word -- all it says is 'Frontpage......']

I made the shortcut, then searched the entire drive for created / changed files, & got nowhere.

Danman32

Hmm. I see your point. You would think that the Windows XP theme would be a file or folder like other themes, but it doesn't seem to exist in the customized theme format.

I'll do some research and digging. Might have to do with some registry entries too.

Danman32

I did a registry search and so far I found the list of themes (and other stuff) under the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\MUICache with @themeui.dll,-2017 as one of the values under that key with the data Windows XP. So it seems that themeui.dll may contain the built-in themes and the registry lists the dll entrypoint for the various themes.

crabeater

Thanks for looking. I also checked the registry & saw those entries. I tried doing modifications to the theme I had access to [classic] and tried to see if things changed in the registry; but I don't think I could change that entry since I had no other theme to choose.

I guess the SFC is a pretty good utility for problems like this. Which it had a 'verbose' option so it could tell me what files are corrupt.

Thanks

Now for a new problem ----