Disable Windows Explorer file hilighting on hover (hot tracking)?

[osRe]

Any idea how to disable in Windows Explorer windows, and the desktop, file hilighting on mouse hover? I'm talking about the hilighting that follows the mouse and happens in addition to the darker hilighting of the selection focus.

Web searching suggests it can't be turned off, other than theme editing and using an empty bitmap. I'm still hoping there's a registry setting to control it. Any idea?

Edited September 3, 2013 by shae

[vinifera]

you can't disable such things via registry as they are "built in" to "read" from skin file

editing .msstyle is easiest and only way to go

Edited September 10, 2013 by vinifera

[osRe]

That's sad. I've never paid attention to the fact that since WinXP you need to modify system DLLs in order to load user styles/themes, simply because I never had to use them. But with Win8's unpleasant stock UI I am starting to notice it.

Particularly with Win8's lack of color/font configuration, I really don't see the point of officially disallowing 3rd party skins.

BTW, some skin elements can be adjusted from the registry, like window border thickness.

[vinifera]

those are system classic appearance settings

you can reach them by going to Personalisation -> windows color ->click on "advanced appearance settings" at the bottom
changing size goes more to system metrics than skin editing
tho images loaded are still locked down to certain minimum size, for example you can't have (atleast in vista/7)
thin borders as in XP, they will always revert back to locked size that was meant for "glass" size loaded by skin image

I really don't see the point of officially disallowing 3rd party skins

as always MS wants to enforce their "vision" of OS look, so they lock down other skins
+ it saves them huuuuge time for OS support, imagine thousand of peoples downloading broken skin, and calling MS support

Edited September 15, 2013 by vinifera