Appearance Classic / XP style problem

[Guest]

Hello -

I just purchased a new PC this week with XP Pro pre-installed. When it
arrived, it was set to use XP style windows and buttons, and the color scheme
was set to silver. I changed the color to olive, and that worked fine. I'm
only explaining this to establish that everything was behaving normally until
this morning.

This morning I boot the system, and the task bar and start menu and windows
are all classic style. I attempted to change it back to xp style, but now
classic style is the only option available in the windows and buttons drop
down menu. I didn't have time to investigate the problem before work, so I
just shut the system down.

Now I get home and boot the system, and the taskbar and start menu are xp
style. I open a window, and it's classic. I go into the display properties,
and it's still set to classic and the xp option is still missing.

I opened and closed multiple applications and all of the windows were
classic style... except the last one, which was xp style. When I closed the
xp style window the task bar and start menu switched back to classic style.
Now everything is classic style again.

Also, now an hourglass is popping up next to the cursor for a moment every
few seconds. I haven't installed any software in the last 24 hours,
everything was working fine last night, and virus and spyware scans are
coming up negative.

If anyone has any idea what is going on, help would be very much appreciated.

- Thanks

 

[Guest]

Also, while my system plays the windows startup and shutdown noises, when I
do anything that would play audio in-between those events (play a media file,
etc.) I get the message that something is already using the audio device.
This is also a new problem which wasn't present last night. I can't imagine
how they could be related, but they've all happened at the same time.

 

[Guest]

I am guessing the hourglass has something to do with a pair of processes that
are rapidly and unceasingly starting and ending. One is a svchost.exe and the
other is drwtsn32.exe

 

[Guest]

Bad news and good
The bad news is I still have no idea what was wrong with my system.

The good news is, I booted linux from a CD-based distribution and my audio
hardware worked fine. When I booted back into windows, everything was back to
normal. Windows and buttons are XP style, XP style is back in the windows and
buttons menu, my audio hardware is working again, there is no hourglass
popping up next to the cursor, and those process are no longer starting and
stopping.

The system had previously been rebooted multiple times, and was even powered
down for several hours while I was at work, but the problem persisted until I
booted into a different operating system.

If anyone can explain that, I'd be fascinated.

 

[Wesley Vogel]

XP works in mysterious ways.

Actually I have no earthly idea.

Glad you got it working and posted back.

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In

 

[Slip Kid]

Bad news and good
The bad news is I still have no idea what was wrong with my system.

The good news is, I booted linux from a CD-based distribution and my audio
hardware worked fine. When I booted back into windows, everything was back to
normal. Windows and buttons are XP style, XP style is back in the windows and
buttons menu, my audio hardware is working again, there is no hourglass
popping up next to the cursor, and those process are no longer starting and
stopping.

The system had previously been rebooted multiple times, and was even powered
down for several hours while I was at work, but the problem persisted until I
booted into a different operating system.

If anyone can explain that, I'd be fascinated.

If I missed it, sorry..

Was linux pre-installed along with XP or did you add that.

Did you ever boot to linux at all, before?

How?

I'd do this? Make sure you establish an non-adminitrator account - -
sound in any case for anyone. If anything really bad is happening you
don't want to get locked out (the bad Admin being the only open door?)

Don't use the Admin account if you don't have to.

In your case, I might go so far as have a second profile (#2 non admin)
-- If there is any corruption now or in your future - -before you figure
all is safe - - it might be nice to have a profile which boots.

Were talking little disk space to do the above.