Microsoft MVP Answer: Windows Themes Appearance Visual Style Fault Summary

Recently, the author has seen several Windows Visual Styles (Windows Themes) display incorrect questions in the Microsoft News Group, and made a lot of suggestions when replying to posts. . The author intends to write a Windows Themes fault summary, summarizing eight representative problems that cause Themes to display anomalies. Themes mentioned here include the look and feel of Windows XP/Server 2003, the Basic style of Windows Vista/Server 2008/Windows 7, and the AERO style.

★ If Windows can't apply any Themes, you can only choose the classic look like Windows 2000:

1. System Services Themes are not enabled.

System Services is one of the most common causes of Windows's inability to apply Themes, especially for Windows Server systems, which are not enabled by default. Execute %SystemRoot%system32SERVICES.MSC with administrator privileges Open the "Services" setting, open the Themes service, and modify its operation mode to "Automatic" (Windows Server 2003).

Windows Server 2008 is only enough to enable Themes service. You also need to manually add the "desktop experience" that is not installed by default through "Administrative Tools" - "Server Management" - "Open or Close Features" - "Add Features" (Desktop Experience) components are available. The official information provided by Microsoft is:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946397

I believe that Windows Server 2008 does not install the "desktop experience" by default, in fact, completely There is no need to presume a Themes service that doesn't work at all. This service can be added when you install the Desktop Experience.

2. Visual Style Folders Resources in WindowsResources hemes are corrupted.

If some or all of the options cannot be found in the list that selects Themes, it may be that the related files in the Visual Styles folder WindowsResources hemes are missing or corrupted.

Windows XP Home/Professional, Windows Server 2003 has Luna built in by default;
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005/Tablet PC Edition 2005 has built-in Luna and Royale Energy Blue;
Windows Vista/Server 2008 has Aero built in. We can copy the WindowsResources hemes folder directly from other Windows computers of the same version for repair.

3. Several system files related to Windows Shell are damaged or need to be re-registered.

In addition to the resources in WindowsResources hemes, if several system files related to Windows Shell are damaged, themes may not be applied, and RUNDLL32 may run incorrectly even when the "Display" property is turned on in the Control Panel. These related system files include Explorer.EXE, Shell32.DLL, User32.DLL, Desk.CPL, ThemeUI.DLL, etc. The solution is SFC /SCANNOW detection and repair.

If you confirm that all system files are not corrupt, but still can't apply Themes or RUNDLL32 running error when opening the "Display" property, you can try to re-register this file by executing REGSVR32 MMSYSTEM.DLL. In a few extreme cases, in addition to MMSYSTEM.DLL, there are other system files that need to be re-registered (this phenomenon generally occurs after the virus is detected and cannot be applied to Themes). In this case, the following statement can be used:

for % 1 in (%WinDir%system32*.DLL) do REGSVR32.EXE /s %1

Save as .BAT batch and run, re-register all .DLL files in system32. However, in addition to the Windows system files, some third-party .DLLs in system32 will be re-registered together, which may cause unnecessary trouble.

In addition, another possibility of the RUNDLL32 running error in the "Display" property of the Control Panel is that the display driver configuration is incorrect. If you start Windows in Safe mode, you can open the "Display" property normally, you may need to go back. Reinstall the display driver in normal mode. In particular, sometimes if you can apply the Basic style in Windows Vista or above, but you can't apply the AERO style, it is very likely that the display driver is not properly configured or the graphics card itself does not support DirectX 9.