The shellstyle DLL is intact and is the same one that is working for the two other PCs.  I've checked and checked again to be sure the paths and such are all correct... it's very odd.  I wish there was some sort of diagnostic info to indicate why it isn't working, but I have not found anything in the Windows logs that would help.  

Edit:  I just created a Win 8.1 VM (Linux Mint host).  My theme works on that too... it's just the one machine where it refuses to work! 

My apologies if this ends up being a double post.  I just entered it a second ago and it failed with an error, and I looked in the forum to see if it had posted anyway, and it was not there.

I have a theme that is just perfect for me in Windows 8.1.  It's one that is a heavily modified version of a Win 7 theme from when I used 7... now I am on 8.1, and I long ago used WSB to port the theme over, which was successful. 

Now that theme works flawlessly on two of my PCs running 8.1.  I just put 8.1 on a third (I don't like Windows 10), but the very same theme that is flawless on the other PCs does not work (I've tried the unsigned theme service and a patcher for the three files, with the same results). 

The .theme file works (it sets the wallpaper and theme color), but the .msstyles is not loading.  It merely uses whatever the last one loaded was.

WSB (newest beta 1.5.6.3) on the two PCs where the theme works can test the theme just fine, and WSB does correctly apply the custom theme when I hit the Test button.  When I try that on the PC where it is not working with my theme, I get an error message:

"Error testing MsStyles File

There was an error applying the Test MsStyles File, this usually signals an error in the MsStyles file."

If there's an error, why does the same file work on two other PCs?  There must be one in there somewhere, but where?

I've tried a custom theme from the web for 8.1 on the PC that isn't working with my theme, and it works fine!  So apparently there is some issue with my theme that prevents it from working only on one of my three PCs, and it also prevents WSB from applying the theme in a test.

Any ideas what I can do to narrow down what this error is?  Thanks!

I have a theme that is just perfect for me in Windows 8.1.  It's one that is a heavily modified version of a Win 7 theme from when I used 7... now I am on 8.1, and I long ago used WSB to port the theme over, which was successful. 

Now that theme works flawlessly on two of my PCs running 8.1.  I just put 8.1 on a third (I don't like Windows 10), but the very same theme that is flawless on the other PCs does not work (I've tried the unsigned theme service and a patcher for the three files, with the same results). 

The .theme file works (it sets the wallpaper and theme color), but the .msstyles is not loading.  It merely uses whatever the last one loaded was.

WSB (newest beta 1.5.6.3) on the two PCs where the theme works can test the theme just fine, and WSB does correctly apply the custom theme when I hit the Test button.  When I try that on the PC where it is not working with my theme, I get an error message:

"Error testing MsStyles File

There was an error applying the Test MsStyles File, this usually signals an error in the MsStyles file."

If there's an error, why does the same file work on two other PCs?  There must be one in there somewhere, but where?

I've tried a custom theme from the web for 8.1 on the PC that isn't working with my theme, and it works fine!  So apparently there is some issue with my theme that prevents it from working only on one of my three PCs, and it also prevents WSB from applying the theme in a test.

Any ideas what I can do to narrow down what this error is?  Thanks!

Thanks 3am, that did it!

I've recently used WSB to port my favorite Windows 7 theme to Windows 8.1.1.  It works quite well except for one thing: After resuming from standby mode, several of the background colors I've set in the theme turn back to white (as in the default aero theme):

Explorer & Shell > Explorer > Control Panel > ControlPanel > ContentPane: Fillcolor
Fonts, Colors, & System Metrics > Fonts & System Metrics: BtnFace
The background of the Win 8 task manager
Probably assorted others

If I enter standby with the personalize dialog (controlled by the first item in the list above) open, then bring the computer back out of standby, I can see the dialog appear onscreen with the correct colors for a second, but then the background visibly changes to white.  At that point, the system creates a new "unsaved theme" (containing the incorrect white colors) and switches to that in the personalize menu.  If I switch back to the named theme I had selected before standby, the colors go back to what they should be.  The correct colors persist through a reboot.

I tried disabling hybrid shutdown at the suggestion of someone online, but it had no effect upon the theme issue.  I tried using the uxtheme service and the patcher to enable the third-party themes (not at the same time); no difference.

Any ideas?  Thanks!

Oops!  Please delete.  It was giving an error; I didn't think it was posting.

Oops!  Please delete.  It was giving an error; I didn't think it was posting.

Oops!  Please delete.  It was giving an error; I didn't think it was posting.

Thanks for the replies.  It is solved-- here's how.

By changing the margins around as you suggested, JMB, I found that I was able to move the white line up or down... if I moved it down 2 pixels, it would overlap the existing white line at the bottom of the bar border, rendering it invisible.  Then, by adding 2 rows of transparent pixels to the bottom of the green moving indicator and to the corresponding SIZINGMARGIN, it looked fine (it did not respond to adding a CONTENTMARGIN at all).  Still, it was kind of hacked-up way of doing it, so I kept looking. 

It was apparent that the white line was not part of the green moving indicator (which lives in Buttons, Boxes, & Controls > Progress Bars > Indeterminate > MoveOverlay).  I eliminated all of the properties, temporarily, in MoveOverlay, and it made the green bar vanish, yet the white line was still there.  Then I had an idea... the very next entry under that is PulseOverlay, which had no properties listed.  I decided to try adding BGTYPE to None... and it worked! 

I still have no clue why my laptop required this and the desktop did not.  They both run Win 7 with all the security updates (laptop x86, desktop x64), with the same Appearance and Performance settings, with the same system colors and personalization options (these are defined in the .THEME file I use).  It's not the DPI scaling, as I tried setting the desktop to the laptop's lower resolution (1280x800), and it didn't change anything.  I installed Win7 cleanly on both PCs, so there should not be anything fishy and proprietary (other than the laptop utilities for the wireless button, etc., which I did install) on there. 

The laptop uses an ATI/AMD gpu and the desktop a Nvidia... that should not make a difference, but this problem should not exist either.  I'm still curious to know what is different, but at least now it is solved.

Thanks again!

3am,

Yes, I modified the theme quite a lot, but I also tried the unmodified 2.5.3 version, and it has the same white line as the modified one.

I also get the little line intermittently on other progress bars... only when it moves.

Hi,

I've been using a version of the Classic AE theme on my desktop for a few months now, and it works nicely.  I just upgraded my old (came with Vista pre-SP1) laptop to 7, and I applied the same theme to it, but the "indeterminate" progress bars (such as you see when searching for Windows updates) are glitched on the laptop.

I tried setting the desktop screen resolution to the same as the laptop (1280x800), but the glitch is still not present.

Here's an illustration.  The top image is the glitched search for updates bar.  There is an extra white line in the progress bar, at the bottom.

The middle image shows how it looks when the little green indicator moves out of the area before reappearing on the left side (it looks normal). 

The bottom image is how the same theme looks on my desktop PC.

Any ideas why it is doing that? 

Also, will I be breaking my VSB theme activation key if I install it on the laptop too?  Normally I would do all my work on the big pc anyway, but I can't even see the bug on the desktop PC. 

The desktop is Win 7 x64 and the laptop is Win 7 x86, if that matters.

Doh!  There it is, just like you said... How did I miss that?  /facepalm

After a bunch of trial and error, I changed Address, Breadcrumb, & Search > Search > Button Toolbar > Basic > SplitButton > CONTENTMARGINS from 2, 0, 0 ,0 to 0, -4, 0, 0, and it worked beautifully.  Thanks!!!

And the thing about if x theme is loaded and I use WSB to test theme y, it shows the search split button according to how theme x says, as far as what I now now are the content margins go... I discovered that I have to hit test/reload, then immediately hit reload AGAIN for the correct margin settings to be applied.  Until then, it was still using the margin settings from the installed theme rather than the one I told it to test. 

Thanks again!  Hopefully, the theme mods are done... everything is working as well as it should now.  There are a few rough patches, but I downloaded and tried out some other themes as well, and the same issues are present in them too, so they are probably not in the .msstyles.  (Specifically, the Shortcut Key box in the properties dialog of any Windows shortcut doesn't look right, and the popup for Outpost Security Suite has weird looking white backgrounds for some of the info it displays... both issues still existed in other non-white-background Aero themes I downloaded).

I am using WSB, the latest beta. 

None of those locations had any properties to mess with.  They were just image files.  I did export the Aero ones and import into Classic AE, applied the .msstyles, and restarted WSB... the only change was the appearance of the search box and the left split button.  While they now look Aero, they are still too far to the right.

I wish I knew more about how WSB tests a theme.  If I could just get it to stay as it is when I have Aero installed but testing Classic AE, that would be perfect!

Thanks as always for your time.

Nuts.  Ah well, I can live without the dark blue highlighted color!  Thanks for the help.  At least I was able to get rid of the white backgrounds that bothered my eyes!

I'm using the same modified Classic AE 2.5.3 theme as in my previous post (but it happens the same if I use the unmodified theme too). 

If I enable the Classic AE theme by selecting it in the Personalize menu and then load WSB, it moves the search button and the dropdown arrow several pixels too far to the right, so that the right edge of the dropdown button is clipped.  It does not change if I test the theme (or any of its variants) with WSB if that or Classic (non-aero) is the theme selected in Personalize. (center image shown below)

If I test the Windows Aero theme with Classic AE set as the theme in Personalize, it too has the too-long search box and the clipped dropdown button (not shown).  But if I enable Aero in the Personalize menu and then test Classic AE, the button looks fine (bottom image below).

I've tried renaming and replacing the shellstyle.dll in the Classic AE folder with the Aero one and the default one in WSB, but it did not help.

Screenshot below. 



Top- the WSB search box in Aero, displayed correctly.
Mid- the WSB search box in AE 2.5.3
Bottom- the WSB search box in AE 2.5.3 if Aero is the system theme and AE is tested with WSB

Thanks! 

To get a textcolor change when highlighted in Items View (right side of Explorer) in 7 is more difficult.

I used Explorer & Shell > Explorer > Items view > Itemsview > TEXTCOLOR:COLOR for that.  Is that not the same thing?

You should realize that there are a lot of places where you can't change the black textcolors when highlighted at all.

That's why people who do classic themes for 7 or 8 can never do dark blue highlights completely. It's impossible.

They cannot be changed even by modifying DLLs?  Sigh.  I had wondered if that was the case with the Classic AE series and their prominent lack of the classic-style dark blue highlights. 

I think I may have found one of the unchangeable ones.  I have been trying to figure out how to change the text color of the pressed but non-hovered jumplist.  The only way I could get the highlighted text color to change to white on the jumplist-opening items in the start menu was to set the color through Start Menu > Panels > Basic > Programs List > HOTTRACKING:COLOR.  None of the TEXTCOLOR properties in any of the JumpList* items under Start Menu > Panels > Basic did anything at all (Asterisk used as a wildcard here). 

The result of this is that it seems to be working fine at first, but after the jumplist opens, if I move the mouse pointer off of the jumplist split button and into the list that appeared in the right panel, the dark blue highlight remains on the item in the left panel, but the text changes back to black, rendering it illegible.

I tried an alternate solution... if I could get the pressed, non-hovered jumplist item in the left panel to change to a light grey color, the black text would be okay, and it would still illustrate the program the jumplist items came from.  It would look like a standard selected, not focus item... but in every attempt I made, the pressed FILLCOLOR overrode the hot/hovered color.  Is this possible?

Thanks!

I wrote:

"I have Classic Shell installed."

That was the problem!  Removing it made the theme you posted work as it should. 

I was thinking about that line above above since I wrote it...  then it dawned on me that Classic Shell modifies the Explorer window (where the theme was not working but should have been) but not the Load/Save dialog (which means I can't have the path instead of breadcrumbs or the up button there), and the theme WAS working in the Load/Save dialog.  The hunch about that proved to be correct!

So now I can figure out if there is a workaround to get themes and Classic Shell to get along, find an alternative, or just live without it, until Classic Shell is fixed.  I think I will let them know about this issue too, since people who are into themes (particularly Classic type ones) probably overlap with Classic Shell's user base to a high degree.

Thanks for your help, 3am-- without you telling me that the mods you suggested definitely do work with the Classic AE theme, I don't know how long it would have taken me to discover the issue, if I did at all. 

Your version does the same as mine... in the tree view in WSB and in the folder pane of the load/save dialog, the blue highlight/white text works, but in regular explorer windows, it is the light blue background with black text. 

My system is Windows 7 x64... the original shellstyle.dll files are in system32 and system64.  I used Universal Theme Patcher x64 to allow the use of the modified .msstyles.  I am using the test button on WSB 1.5.6.3 to apply the styles for testing.  I have Classic Shell installed.  I tried re-enabling everything in the Windows System/Advanced/Performance options; didn't work.  I had Window Blinds test version installed for a day or two but it has since been uninstalled.

Anything else it could be?  I'm new here, but I have read a bunch of your posts, and if it has you stumped, I don't like my odds of figuring it out!  Something has to be strange in my system somewhere-- but everything seems to be working fine, other than that. 

Thanks for the input! 

Edit:  I thought previously that adding the change you mentioned above into the otherwise unmodified Aero Classic theme had worked.  Now it again is doing the same thing-- black text only, completely ignoring the textcolor and fillcolor settings in Selected and HotSelected.  Clearly, though, it worked for you; I see the screenshots.  Now I can't be sure it worked for me before... maybe I was mistaken and I was looking at another treeview (most probably, the one in WSB itself).   

My previous version of this post is below for reference.

Wow, I'll be... you're right; when I do it with the unmodified Aero Classic theme, it does work.  I had been using my modified version where I'd already changed a ton of things.  I can export all of the modified images and recreate it (more carefully)... but I really am curious to know what would be preventing this from working in my modded version, if you have any ideas.  I will go through my various incremental saved files (I must have 40 of them) and see if I can narrow down when the change was made.  

It should have been obvious to test it with the unmodded theme.  It is even more annoying that I didn't think of that because I did just that (tested changes on a fresh copy of the theme) with several other issues I had (and solved, eventually).  

Thanks again for your help!  

Just add Textcolors to Explorer & Shell > Explorer > TreeView > TreeItem > Hot, Selected, SelectedNotFocus and HotSelected.[/img]

That doesn't change anything in the folder tree in Explorer.  I added color:textcolor properties to Selected and HotSelected, and set them to white (and then reloaded the test in WSB).  The changes can be seen in the tree view in WSB, though, and it works as you described in the default Aero theme too.  For some reason, though, the treeview in explorer does not respond to the changes.

Thanks for the reply! 

Hi all,

I've been modifying Saarineames' Aero Classic 2.5.3 theme for my own use. 

I've been successful in changing the background color of just about everything from white (which bothers my eyes) to a nice gray, but I want to go further and restore the classic white-text-on-dark-blue colors on just about everything selected or highlighted.  The dark blue background has been pretty easy, but in a lot of places, the text (hot, selected, or otherwise) stubbornly refuses to be any color other than black (which makes it completely illegible against the dark blue background). Most notably, the treeview pane on the left side of the explorer window. 

In the standard Windows 7 Aero theme, changing the highlighted/selected text color to white is easy; just set Fonts & System Metrics > Highlighttext.  It doesn't work in Aero Classic, though, and I've been unable to figure out how to change it.  I've even tried setting every color:textcolor in the entire .msstyles to a random color to see if one of them will happen to change it (none did).  I've tried adding all kinds of properties to dozens of elements that seem like they might be related, but I did not have any luck at all.  I tried swapping in the shellstyle.dll from W7 Aero, but it didn't work (and resulted in the drop arrows being replaced by tiny little boxes in Explorer). 

Can anyone suggest where to look next?  Surely it has to be in there somewhere, since the stock aero .msstyles allows it.

Thanks!