Windows 7 Custom theme not being used when activated

[Rod Lockwood]

Custom theme not being used when activated [Solved]

I had this theme working once. Somewhere along the line, Windows decided to activate aero again. I finally turned it off, but now it is using a default theme even though it says I am using the custom theme. Help/Troubleshooting is useless since it only helps you turn aero on.

I tried downloading and installing a theme pack. It didn’t work.

 

[Rod Lockwood]

I finally figured it out on my own. So here is what I did so anyone who has the same problem can fix it.

I investigated the theme file in username/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Theme/ that Windows was supposed to be using. In my case, it was Victorian Cosmos 2.theme. I opened it in Notepad and changed the path under visual styles from "%SystemRoot%\resources\Themes\Aero\aero.msstyles" to "%SystemRoot%\resources\Ease of Access Themes\basic.theme".

Then I went into the registry using Registry Toolkit 64bit and searched for "themes". I then found and changed the following paths:
%ResourceDir%\Themes\aero.msstyles to %ResourceDir%\ease of access themes\basic.theme
%SystemRoot%\resources\themes\aero.msstyles to %SystemRoot%\resources\ease of access themes\basic.theme
C:\Users\Victorian Cosmos\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\custom.theme to C:\Users\Victorian Cosmos\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\Victorian Cosmos 2.theme

Everything is now working the way it should.