Desktop Themes not responding

[OmegaRedd]

Hey Dudes, everytime I try to change my desktop theme, the theme will load in the preveiw window but will not execute to the desktop. Eventually, I end up hitting CTRL+ALT+DEL to see the message, "Desktop Themes is not responding". When I restart Windows Me the desktop theme I selected shows up. Ive tried removing and reinstalling "Themes" several times to no avail. Help a brother out, if you can. Thanks!

[kaz101]

Morning :)

could you possibly give a little more information like is it every desktop theme you try (specifically std ones)?

DT use an awful lot of system resources... what are your system specs?

Are you using an upgrade of full version of ME?

:)

[OmegaRedd]

Here is the additional information you requested. This problem of the Desktop theme not executing occurs for all themes (especially related to Plus!). Also my system resources are kind of flaky. Usally when I boot up my resources are around 69% but after about an half hour my system resources drop to about 49% (sometimes slightly lower, like 43%. Also I am using the full version of ME. Good Luck!

[kaz101]

Hi :)

this is going to sound flakey :rolleyes: but have you tried only loading partial themes? Start with trying to load the smallest graphic (idea being minimal disruption/pull on resource)hit apply/ok to see what happens. If it accepts it then work your way up from there adding a little more a time till but don't mix the load (by that I mean load only graphics, or only icons, or only sound) and see what happens and where it stops.

next annoying questions for you...
Has it always happened?
How much ram to have?

[OmegaRedd]

Kaz101, I will try your suggestion. And the answer to your question is no it hasn't happened all the time. I believe the problem did not start until I tried to reload ME about a week ago. Right now my computer has 224megs of RAM.

[kaz101]

Heeeeaps of RAM :D

by reload windows did you mean you installed it over the top of itself? Was it successful in every other way?

you might want to take a look at your drivers, these may need to be updated as they 'could' have been overwritten or become corrupt with reinstalling.

anyway, good luck with my previous suggestion, hopefully we can pin it down soon :)

[OmegaRedd]

KAZ101, I tried executing the themes like you said and certain things did work like the icons and sound. You are right that some of those files are probably corrupt because I did reload ME over the first version. That's because the scan disk system tools do not seem to respond. I have tried to uninstall Windows ME so the computer will revert back to the initial ME that I loaded but the uninstall requires all of my harddrives to be scanned which doesn't seem to work. I watch the system reallocate files for two hours and still did not scan drive C and I have 5 harddrives(partitioned of course) that need to be scanned. I remember reading somewhere about ME having a scan disk problem. If you have the solution to this problem please let me know before I have to reformat harddrives. I really DO NOT WANT TO DO THAT. Check back with you soon.

[kaz101]

Hi
We're still a way off reformatting ;)

ok...so icons work as does sound, that'll leave you with your wallpaper? will it load the wallpaper by itself? you could try throwing Dr Watson on and forcing the error to see if he'll shed any light on the problem but it would pay to check those drivers anyway.

scan disk and defrag (do you have the same problems with defrag?) do tend to stick on some comps running ME and can take on awfully loooong time to run in 'thorough' mode... the larger (and more) drives you have the longer it'll take to run right through. I'm unsure whether you meant that scan disk stops responding, or whether it completes but only partially, or whether you manually stop the scan. The comp I have ME on has 1 20g drive and it takes around 5hours to complete in thorough mode :eek: The most effect (but not only) way of running scan (and defrag) seems to be via safe mode so you could give that a shot. Just a thought :rolleyes: have you tried running maintenance wizard?