Colors in Vista Premium

[Jim G]

I went out and bought the upgrade from Windows Xp home to Vista Premium. The
upgrade went smooth (Had to remove Roxio, but not an issue). The only 2
issues I am having are:

1.) I cannot for the life of me change the color of the taskbar (Hate the
black). According to what I have read you have to goto Color and Appearance
and make sure that you are running the Areo color scheme and transpareny set
to on, which it is. I have a single 21inch gateway monitor (1600x1200,
32bit), but vista/nvidia thinks that I have 2 monitors as I have that
capability with my pc (but only 1 connected). Regardless of what I do, the
taskbar still remains black. I also downloaded the latest drivers from
Nvidia.

2.) I use Msn messenger with my job, anytime that I get a message from
someone I cannot see it flash like it did in Windows Xp, infact It does not
appear to flash at all. Now this could be related to the color of the
taskbar but I am not sure. I even uninstalled it and reinstall with no luck.
I have the option set in messenger to flash when I get a message but this is
critical that I get this working right.

I appreciate the help!

Jim

 

[Troy McClure]

taskbar color doesnt change

 

[JP]

The task bar color is the lovely dull gray / black and cannot be changed.
There is only one Aero Theme with Vista - "Dull Gray/Black".

I can't help but wonder how much more effort it would have taken to
provide say, 3 Aero Themes with Vista?

 

[Jim G]

Man, thats crap. There has got to be a hack for it somewhere. Any idea on
the msn messenger issues?

Jim

 

[Kurt Herman]

Just right clicked on my desktop, picked Personalize, Windows Color and
Appearance, tried all 8 colors, and it worked fine on everything (Taskbar
included).

Vista Home Premium, NV6600GT, 100.59 drivers....

Kurt

 

[Jim G]

Then there has to be a bug in PC's with dual monitor support. I went into
the display properties and disabled one of the monitors and restarted but
still no luck.

Jim

 

[Jarhead]

My MSN messenger flashes and changes to an "orange" color.

 

[molitar]

The beta DesktopX 5.5 will change it for you. But you will have to be a
subscriber to get access to the beta version

 

[JP]

No... the windows colors will change, but the task bar and start menu do not.
Not sure what you are looking at or perhaps you have a 3rd party app.

 

[Kurt Herman]

They do change color. Its just that they fade from highlight on top to dark
on bottom. Its a gradient, from a lighter color to almost black, but the
color does change.

Kurt

 

[Jane C]

Running Aero with glass enabled will allow the taskbar to change. Mine is a
lovely shade of glassy purple, and semi-transparent too.

However, if you maximize a window on your desktop, then the taskbar reverts
to being black and solid.

If you want to maintain a different colour taskbar, with transparency, then
don't use the maximize button. Instead, drag the corners of the window
until it covers the entire desktop.