Ugly taskbar, what to do?

[DrAmar]

Ok, here is basically my problem,

I recently decided to replace my Win 2000 Pro with the Windows XP pro (Full version, not upgrade). Everything worked great untill my hard drive crashed, and I was forced to reinstall my XP.

Unfortunately, in the meantime I managed to somehow damage my my explorer.exe file, and so, during the new installation, the setup (79% completition) keept asking for my explorer.exe file even though my XP-cd was still in the drive.

Being to lazy to RMA the XP and wait a few days, I took my old Win 2000pro CD and let the setup find only the required file from that CD (Very well knowing that XP/2k share a lot of files together). The thing actually worked, the setup continued with the installation and soon asked me again for my XP CD (80% setup complete),so except that 1% of files, all the files of my OS are XP files.

In conclusion I got the 100% working WIN XP PRO, but with the ugly, gray WIN 2k taskbar that now simply looks out of place (Looks like that 1% was actually the taskbar installation).

Since I would really hate to have to reinstall the whole XP again, I was wondering if there is any way to change merely the apperance of the taskbar. (Like add a blue color or something?!?)

Thanks,
DrAmar

Ps. The START icon also failed to install, so instead of the WIN logo I just have generic white icon + pressing it brings the submenu that says Windows 2000Pro, but all icons in it are actually from the XP version.

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[PartieHonteuse]

Why not just try and extract the explorer.exe file from the cd now? It can and will over write it if you'd like it to. Else, you can extract it with a different name, edit the registry to point to the new extracted explorer.exe as your shell..

 

[jihiggs]

omg. do you know how many places explorer is referenced to??????? origional poster, just reinstall windows.

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[PartieHonteuse]

umm, if you want to get technical, it's only referenced in 1 place to actually change the shell. It's in the registry and the path is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
find "shell" edit the data value to point to the new shell.

So, before calling me crazy, might want to make sure you know what you're talking about.


if you have a test system with 2k or XP on it, copy explorer.exe from system32 to another directory, then rename it. edit that registry key to point to the new shell and reboot...i bet it works.


<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by PartieHonteuse on 03/21/04 11:16 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[jihiggs]

lets make a deal. you go ahead and search for explorer.exe and tell me again how many times its in the registry, if there is only one in there i will eat my shoes.

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[jihiggs]

btw, i am aware that the other entries dont change the shell, my point is running windows with two different explorer.exe files is retarded.

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[PartieHonteuse]

My point is, instead of wasting the time to do a reinstall, all he/she would have to do is extract the file from the CDRom...that's it. Not taking the time to reinstall the operating system and all programs/settings. I'm done with this topic...good day.