Appearance issue in Windows XP

Im having problems with the appearance in windows xp. There are two
ways (so far) that I can address these visual predicements.

One is within Office 2003: My office has severely changed appearance.
My Outlook now looks like this:
http://www.diskusjon.no/index.php?ac...post&id=135012.
It is suppose to be more like this:
http://www.diskusjon.no/index.php?ac...post&id=135309.
I have found out that Office appearance is controlled by windows
appearance under "display properties -> appearance". I have tried
everything here. Nothing helps.

The other is that my desktop icon text are embedded with colorfilled
background. For this problem I have found two general solutions. The
first solution is to go to "system properties -> advanced ->
performance settings" and check the box "Use drop shadows for icon
labels on the desktop". And the other is to uncheck a box for "Lock
Web Items on Desktop" under "Display properties -> desktop ->
customize desktop -> Web". I have tried these solutions and still I do
not get back the transparent icon-text-background. Annoying as hell,
yeah!

So I thought that it might be something I've installed recently that
made a mess of my appearance. Going through my list of installed
software I do not find anything that isnt installed on my other
computer (where the appearance is fine).

I have also searched through the computer with Lavasoft Ad-Aware and
Avira Antivir. - nothing found.

Im going crazy here, this has never happened before and I can not find
anyone with similar problem.
Im guessing this is a general windows xp blooper so I hope someone
here can help me

plz reply if you have suggests

regards
Morten