Something's up with my Desktop.

[pokeplayer984]

I'll do my best to explain.

I woke up this morning and turned on my computer, only to not only find the "No disk" error that's been plaguing me for some time, but that the bottom bar had been changed in design and color.  It looked like one from an earlier version of Windows rather than the XP lite SP3 I hold. (Note: I checked and I STILL have XP lite SP3 on here.)

On top of that, all my shortcuts have black boxes around the text.

I did a System Restore to remove the error and everything else stayed the way it was when I turned it on.  Black boxes around text and everything.

Can anyone tell me what could've happened to cause this?  The main thing I'm not liking are the black boxes. -_-

[Vilstrup]

I have never encountered a thing like this, so I don't know the reason nor the proper answer to what you should do.

However, if it get worse, or you have tried everything, I might recommend you reinstall the operational system. I hope you have some kind of backup, because a move like that will delete everything on your harddrive. Make it a last resort move, and only if it is totally necessary, depending on if you can't make a backup of the files on your computer.

[DarkHououmon]

Hmm... strange. Did you try going into the Display part of the computer and changing it there? There is an option on XP to get the Classic Windows look. Maybe it was accidentally changed?

[landbeforetimelover]

Your display theme (the thing I installed on your computer to make it look like vista) has become corrupted.  No big deal.  It happened to me just last week.  Just download my LBT desktop theme again and reinstall it.

http://24.18.155.27/Public%20Applications/...LBT%20Theme.zip

There's instructions in the archive.  It might be a good idea to uninstall the corrupted theme BEFORE you try to apply it again.  The theme will come up as "VistaLBT" by Landbeforetimelover and there will be several of them for you to delete in the list.  If you run into any problems, please let me know.  

Oh, and what caused my theme to be corrupted was a virus, so do a thorough scan with AVG and Spybot S&D to make sure you don't have something terrible lurking on your computer.  Make sure to update them before scanning though, even if they say they're up to date (they always lie).  It's no use scanning your computer with an archaic version of the software.  

[pokeplayer984]

I did a System Restore again because I got the No disk error from trying to download Spybot S&D off the net. (Yes, I didn't have it all along.) However, I set it to several days ago, and it went back to what it normally did.  No more black boxes or anything.

However, just to be on the safe side, I'm still running an AVG Scan and a Spybot S&D scan. (Tried a different link, which had a workable one.) Here's hoping I find whatever caused this problem in the first place.

[Kor]

Good luck.  Hope it all works out.

[Petrie.]

I know a Windows update disabled any theme that MS didn't like and reverted you back to classic skins.  At first I thought that was your issue.

[landbeforetimelover]

Well in this case Petrie, I didn't build all the code in the LBT theme because I didn't want MS to disable it.  I took the standard windows XP theme and modified every aspect of it to look like vista.  Then I decompiled the author information and put my information in its place.  That's the surefire way to be sure that you'll only use code that MS likes and it's what 99% of theme builders do.  If you got a theme that MS didn't like it was because it used code that wasn't naively windows based.

[pokeplayer984]

Well, problem fixed.  Who would've guessed just one file could've spread SO many bugs?

Thanks for your help.

[Kor]

Glad to hear your problem is fixed.  Hope it won't happen again, but you know what to do if it does at least.