I wasn't concluding that it didn't work because uxtender did work: I tried nLite on SP3 (I know it has worked for me with Sp2) and it does not work. Themes are integrated, components are removed, tweaks tweaked, but no unsigned themes. Eg: I set apperance to luna royal, black compact. Applies windows classic theme. No modified shell or anything. Anyway, I've been able to use uxtender to patch uxtheme.dll, but having trouble integrating it with hfslip. I've tried fix, appreplacement, now i'm cabbing it up and trying replace/i386. I'll post back with results. So far no luck.