loosing theme after restart

[rickybobby]

Just got WSB and it seems to be pretty straight forward but I must be doing something wrong because when I log off and on or reboot I loose my

changes. Here is what I am doing:

-Open up WSB 1.5 and then Open an existing Visual Style -> Windows > Resources > Themes > Aero > aero.msstyles

-I go to: Taskbar and System Tray > Taskband > Basic > Taskband and click on the white color next to TEXYCOLOR: COLOR and change it to black

-Try to save the file as: aero.msstyles but it says  'target file in use' so I save it under another name. (ie. mytheme.msstyles)

-It then asked me it I want to use the theme and I say yes and all looks and works great

-I go into personalize and save the untitled theme as MyTheme.

-Then I reboot and it reverts to the classic theme. I go into Personalize and Mytheme is there and when I click on it nothing changes. It stays

as classic. I can choose Wnndows Basic theme again and all is in order but of course my changes are gone.

I tried a whole bunch of variations on this and no matter what I do I loose changes when I restart and can't get my theme back. I even tried booting into Linux on another partition and renaming mytheme.msstyles to aero.msstyles. Same thing occurs.

Any ideas...

Thanks.

[3am]

Watch this video on how to use WSB:

http://vistastylebuilder.com/forum/index.php?topic=1268.0

Then watch these videos on how to make a theme folder ( including a .theme file you need to run a theme from Personalization):

http://vistastylebuilder.com/forum/index.php?topic=1326.0

These should get you on the right track

[Panda X]

Don't try to overwrite Aero, WSB bases all themes on it so it'll get messy when you have no base to work with.

Make sure the folder structure it proper too.

C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\Your Theme

In "Your Theme" you should have Your Theme.msstyles and a folder called Shell (copy the one from Aero)

[rickybobby]

After I posted this problem I decide to download and apply Universal Theme Patcher and after that I was able to retain changes following the steps in my initial post.

However, thanks 3am for the quick response. I didn't have time to watch all of them yet but I definitely will when I get some more time.

... and thanks Panda X, I followed your advice and it worked as well!

Yay, now I can tweak up Windows 7 Basic theme some more. (Aero is crashing my system, I get a BSOD from my ATI/AMD card even though it is a new-ish notebook with a 1 gig 5730) I have been trying every fix I can get my hands on for the past month and nothing seems to stop the random crashing. I have installed and uninstalled so many video drivers, updates, cleaners and tried so many roll backs with Flash and other things, different antivirus, Java, etc, etc. Then I tried using Basic Theme and no more BSOD! However, no cool interface anymore either. oh well better than random BSODs!!

[Panda X]

After I posted this problem I decide to download and apply Universal Theme Patcher and after that I was able to retain changes following the steps in my initial post.

However, thanks 3am for the quick response. I didn't have time to watch all of them yet but I definitely will when I get some more time.

... and thanks Panda X, I followed your advice and it worked as well!

Yay, now I can tweak up Windows 7 Basic theme some more. (Aero is crashing my system, I get a BSOD from my ATI/AMD card even though it is a new-ish notebook with a 1 gig 5730) I have been trying every fix I can get my hands on for the past month and nothing seems to stop the random crashing. I have installed and uninstalled so many video drivers, updates, cleaners and tried so many roll backs with Flash and other things, different antivirus, Java, etc, etc. Then I tried using Basic Theme and no more BSOD! However, no cool interface anymore either. oh well better than random BSODs!!

What the error message on the BSOD?

[rickybobby]

Video Hardware error...

Description
A problem with your video hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.

Problem signature
Problem Event Name:   LiveKernelEvent
OS Version:   6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID:   4105

Extra information about the problem
BCCode:   117
BCP1:   FFFFFA800C784010
BCP2:   FFFFF880047A4FB8
BCP3:   0000000000000000
BCP4:   0000000000000000
OS Version:   6_1_7600
Service Pack:   0_0
Product:   768_1
Bucket ID:   X64_0x117_Tdr:2_IMAGE_atikmpag.sys
Server information:   004bd232-5aac-4eaa-b502-3385f690f632

[Panda X]

Odd, maybe SP1 would help?

[rickybobby]

I grabbed that error text from an older crash message, (it's been going on for quite a while...). I have installed SP1 since with no luck. If anything it made it worse! If you google "atikmpag.sys bsod" you see the result pages plastered with problems very similar or identical to mine. After digging around I found out it's not just ATI cards either, Nvidia too and maybe others. Seems like there is a GPU issue with Win 7 and since Aero uses GPU i figured it was worth a shot turning it off. I also run Ubuntu 10.10 on another partition on the same notebook and it has never crashed after a year and quite a few hours of stress testing to duplicate the Windows crashing.