If you go to the control panel, then administrative tools, it has some log viewers you can look at.

Do you have the latest version of DirectX? Make sure you have 9. If you do, press start, go to run... type dxdiag and press OK. That has stuff you can test your video card with, so you can see if there are any problems by running tests.

Ya I looked at those logs but they don't seem to tell me anything about the crashes. All I can seem to find is mostly (but not all) internet related.

Hi, I had the same problem and figured it out:

If your Windows XP is crashing with a rundll32.exe error whenever you either try to change the background color, or the desktop theme then try this:

Check the following registry keys ensuring 'Administrators' and 'System' have full control:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Sophos

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\Interface

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\Typelib

You can do this by right clicking on the key and going to Permissions. If any keys don't then simply add them.

After i got hit with spyware, my Software\Classes didn't have the permissions, I changed it back and it worked!