Desktop Themes wont load on the taskbar

[Oobie-]

I figured this is the most appropriate place to post this.
Basically this:



I tried installing this theme:
http://haran-hockey.deviantart.com/a...et=10#comments


and followed the instructions for that and for allowing unsigned themes from here, but it didn't work for some reason. I rebooted and then my normal looking zune theme changed to the screenshot above.

As you can see, the taskbar isn't in the zune theme but the rest is. It even happens for the royale theme too. Only theme that isn't bodged is the windows classic one! Even the horrible default blue theme that comes with XP doesnt work :/

So I went back, and did it all again, I got the theme I was originally trying to install to half work...the taskbar again doesnt change to what it should be.

The backup and replacing of the original uxtheme.dll did nothing too

Therefore I have a feeling its registry keys/values...

So, any ideas?
Cheers

(yes I tried reinstalling the themes that worked, and I also tried doing a settings recovery from the XP cd to no avail )

[Oobie-]

Well I figured out what was wrong. (for anyone that googles this and needs a solution)
Apart from me not rebooting when I first tried installing this, the problem laid with the uxtheme.dll file that was sitting in my windows folder....
No idea how that got there.

Anyway, you can't just remove/rename them in windows normally, you need to boot into safe mode, then rename+move it, reboot again then delete it. Why on earth I didn't think to go into safe mode in the first place is beyond me!

Before I did this next step I made sure that there wasn't a copy in the i386 folder or the dllcache folder. (I had replaced them using the XP recovery stuff)
I then replaced whatever version of the dll that was in my system32 folder with the original non-patched one (by renaming the one that was in there, and then immediately copying the original) and rebooted again (still in safe mode).

Came back into safe mode for the last time, and searched anything that was uxtheme.dll and deleted them all apart from the original one which I just put back in (I had loads which had been renamed to things like zzzzzzzzzzzzzuxtheme.dll )

Rebooted back in normal mode, and BAM, things work again. Tried the new theme again, and it worked