OK, I'm getting really desparate.

Here's the original post I made on gfxOasis asking for help:

"I'm sure that most of you have seen the "Please Wait..." screen with the background fading out into greyscale while changing themes. Of late, however, my computer does not display this message. Instead, it just blacks out certain parts of the screen, and then changes right into the theme I'm applying. At first I though this could be because that I'm changing colour schemes within a theme, but then I noticed this problem even when changing between different theme.

I know that this is a fairly minor detail, but I could prefer to see a "Please Wait..." screen when changing themes rather than seeing my desktop go abruptly into another theme. What could have happened to it, and how could I get it back? I have not been messing around system files (other than UxTheme.dll), but I do change theme frequently though."

Since then, I have experinced error messages that mention "desk.cpl", "rundll32.dll", and "shell32.dll" when changing visual styles, with the Display Properties dialog disappearing after that. Attempts to manually restore system files ("shell32.dll" and "msgina.dll") did not solve the problem. I did three system restores, but all failed (it did not even restore). I'm using a computer that came preinstalled with Windows XP SP1, and I only have a restore CD. I installed SP2 on top of SP1, but the problem did not appear to be associated with the installation of SP2.

Any ideas? I have run out of them, and I'm posting this here just in case someone knows what I'm going through.

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i would reccomend that you contact your computer manufacturer or some other official helpdesk place rather than our forum. we don't offer support for any software on our forums.