Right-Click menu on Desktop Color Change

[hag672]

Hi:

I am using Windows XP Pro 32-bit.

Under Display Properties > Appearance, I have windows configured for: Windows and Buttons - Windows Classic Style, Color Scheme: Windows Standard, Font Size: Large.

I When I right-click on a blank space on the desktop the menu that contains: New, Properties, Refresh... appears with white on dark blue (normal for windows standard color scheme).

If I select New, a menu appears containing: Text Document and more appears. for some reason THAT menu appears with black letters on dark blue (very hard to see). I would like to change this to the normal white on dark blue as in the other menus.

I went into Display Properties > Appearance, and selected Advanced to see where I could change these colors. I tried: Menu, Selected Item, and others, but with no luck.

How can I change the black on dark blue to the normal white on dark blue for all menu colors?

Much thanks,

hag672

[Joseph_sw]

You may want to manually, change values in:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors

somehow, under winXP i need to restart, for it to apply the changes.

[hag672]

You may want to manually, change values in:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors

somehow, under winXP i need to restart, for it to apply the changes.

Thanks,

This would not be practical for me to do because I have an extreme visual impairment. I would never play with the registry myself

Edited June 30, 2012 by hag672

[submix8c]

How odd... I don't want to fiddle with mine too much until I back it up first, but there is a TIP given that claims that changing Themes will "reset" the "Advanced" items you may have fiddled with back to "defaults". I haven't tried it yet.

FWIW, without "fiddling much" I use (after Fresh Install) "Taskbar And Start Menu" the "Classic" Mode and did NOT change my Display Properties (except "Settings" for Resolution and Color) and it "automagically" defaults to "Windows Classic" under "Appearance" and no other selection shows. I also use in Explorer "Folder Options" the setting "Use Windows Classic".

In that case (above, and why I said "How odd")

Desktop->right-click->mouse-over "New"

Gives white-on-blue.

Desktop->right-click->mouse-over "New"->mouse-over "anything"

Gives white-on-blue.

When the mouse is NOT "over" it's black-on-grey (NOT black-on-darkblue).

When I actually SELECT "Text Document" it creates one on the Desktop with White-On-Blue description.

Do you use any "tweaking" like e.g. WindowBlinds? Have you set any "Accessibility Options" in "Control Panel" for Display?

Try the "TIP" to see if it does reset (apply, then put back to your preferred Theme then apply).

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Under Display Properties > Appearance, I have windows configured for: Windows and Buttons - Windows Classic Style, Color Scheme: Windows Standard, Font Size: Large.

I When I right-click on a blank space on the desktop the menu that contains: New, Properties, Refresh... appears with white on dark blue (normal for windows standard color scheme).

If I select New, a menu appears containing: Text Document and more appears. for some reason THAT menu appears with black letters on dark blue (very hard to see). I would like to change this to the normal white on dark blue as in the other menus.

I just followed these exact steps and got the correct result which is the old Windows 95 appearance with white text on dark blue background, this does appear correctly when right-click on the desktop (*and* in the flyout submenu with 'New').

We should full stop right here because getting something other than white on blue is a key symptom of something that needs to be fixed. Tinkering with Advanced Appearance will only mask it.

Ideas ...

[1] Accessibility feature or add-in of some kind?

[2] 3rd party Theme Manager?

[3] Some crazy policy setting or TweakUI adjustment? (Come to think of it, if you have TweakUI running and it has the 'persistent' startup thing where it loads on every boot, you could try to disable this and see if the Classic returns to normal. Just an idea).

[4] Any chance that you overwrote the official Luna theme with another? Certainly this could cause something like this because I believe that 'Classic' is contained within Luna (luna.msstyles ... size=4,190,352 ... date=2008-04-13)

I went into Display Properties > Appearance, and selected Advanced to see where I could change these colors. I tried: Menu, Selected Item, and others, but with no luck.

Yes, Selected Items is the correct object to change colors for the menus, including the desktop context (right-click) popup.

After you altered the Selected Items (NOTE: the upper font/size/color is for the background, the lower one is for the foreground), are you absolutely positive you clicked 'OK' to dismiss the Advanced Appearance dialog, *and* the clicked 'APPLY' in the still open Display Properties parent window, and then finally 'OK' to dismiss that window?

Again, the problem should not have to be fixed this way, applying the default 'Classic' should have a known expected result here.

NOTE: After this is fixed you may want to hunt around the WinXP themes sites for a custom VisualStyle that caters to your particular eyesight. I expect there are many special hi-contrast Accessibility versions around. Also note that this will require you to patch the UxTheme.dll first.

EDIT: shuffled the quote around and fixed up the reply.

Edited June 30, 2012 by CharlotteTheHarlot

[hag672]

Under Display Properties > Appearance, I have windows configured for: Windows and Buttons - Windows Classic Style, Color Scheme: Windows Standard, Font Size: Large.

I When I right-click on a blank space on the desktop the menu that contains: New, Properties, Refresh... appears with white on dark blue (normal for windows standard color scheme).

If I select New, a menu appears containing: Text Document and more appears. for some reason THAT menu appears with black letters on dark blue (very hard to see). I would like to change this to the normal white on dark blue as in the other menus.

I just followed these exact steps and got the correct result which is the old Windows 95 appearance with white text on dark blue background, this does appear correctly when right-click on the desktop (*and* in the flyout submenu with 'New').

We should full stop right here because getting something other than white on blue is a key symptom of something that needs to be fixed. Tinkering with Advanced Appearance will only mask it.

Ideas ...

[1] Accessibility feature or add-in of some kind?

[2] 3rd party Theme Manager?

[3] Some crazy policy setting or TweakUI adjustment? (Come to think of it, if you have TweakUI running and it has the 'persistent' startup thing where it loads on every boot, you could try to disable this and see if the Classic returns to normal. Just an idea).

[4] Any chance that you overwrote the official Luna theme with another? Certainly this could cause something like this because I believe that 'Classic' is contained within Luna (luna.msstyles ... size=4,190,352 ... date=2008-04-13)

I went into Display Properties > Appearance, and selected Advanced to see where I could change these colors. I tried: Menu, Selected Item, and others, but with no luck.

Yes, Selected Items is the correct object to change colors for the menus, including the desktop context (right-click) popup.

After you altered the Selected Items (NOTE: the upper font/size/color is for the background, the lower one is for the foreground), are you absolutely positive you clicked 'OK' to dismiss the Advanced Appearance dialog, *and* the clicked 'APPLY' in the still open Display Properties parent window, and then finally 'OK' to dismiss that window?

Again, the problem should not have to be fixed this way, applying the default 'Classic' should have a known expected result here.

NOTE: After this is fixed you may want to hunt around the WinXP themes sites for a custom VisualStyle that caters to your particular eyesight. I expect there are many special hi-contrast Accessibility versions around. Also note that this will require you to patch the UxTheme.dll first.

EDIT: shuffled the quote around and fixed up the reply.

Yes, I do have ToggleKeys set to ON in the Assessability options. I went into Display Properties, and reset the Windows color scheme to Windows Classic, and applied the change. I then changed the desktop color back to a plain black background.

That seems to have done the trick!!!

Much Thanks

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Glad to hear you got it sorted out although I am still unclear on whether it was Accessibility or just the need to click 'Apply' or something else.

BTW, I looked at a bunch of XP theme sites and could not find any specific groups of msstyle or full theme packs specifically for the visually impaired (i have a few clients also interested in drop-in solutions rather than tweaking the settings themselves). There are things to be wary of ...

- Many of the sites found through Google just copy and paste some boilerplate text about 'visually impaired' with the same identical lines appearing over and over presumably as Google bait (for all their talk Google still has not got a handle on this). Many of these sites just reproduce generic instructions on using the Accessibility high-contrast settings in Control Panel.

- Some other sites appear to be just using your search term(s) to generate a page on the fly as click bait.

- Some of the themes you try to download will instead send an EXE file (not the theme) or a downloader stub. The former is almost always spyware while the latter may be some stupid client downloader app which is not needed in any browser anyway. Just be sure to always click SAVE instead of OPEN or RUN, and also just cancel any download that sends an EXE. No theme needs to be in an installer, it's files just need to be unpacked into a subfolder in Windows\Resources\Themes, while the something.theme file should be in that root folder. Done.

So be careful if you go hunting.

EDIT: typos

Edited July 11, 2012 by CharlotteTheHarlot