Black taskbar

[Dani]

Is it possible to change the color of the taskbar from black? It's kinda ugly.

[DavidRyan]

Which OS/theme are you on that gives you a Black toolbar?
With XP the options are restricted to Olive Green (bleh), Blue (dull) or Silver (at least you don't notice it).

[Dani]

But this is the Windows Vista forum :)

[Dortz]

Eurika! I've found it! After about 5 hours of digging, I finally have something to show for it:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v298/Dortz/firstlookatthenewwonder.jpg

You'll need these two things: the first, cannot be substituted, as it includes hacked uxtheme.dll files, which will need to be replaced. the second is one of the precious few custom themes for vista right now, HilledSE

http://anti-tgtsoft.com/repository/uxtheme/Windows%20Vista/SP0/
http://idatop.com/archives/file/HilledSE_for_Vista_RTM_by_jemaho/39961.htm

the two file packages contain readmes, but to ease the process, you will need to run MMC (just type 'MMC' in the search toolbar, it will come up), and open Computer Management. From there, in the 'Local Users and Groups' tab, there will be the disabled 'administrator' user. set a password for it and enable it by right clicking on it and accessing the option through 'properties'.

Honestly, enabling the generally 'hidden' administrator account is the only way to make this work. trust me, I basically tried everything else before i found out how to do that.

once you have full administrator access, the steps to taking permissions on a system controlled file are simple. right click the file, go to 'properties' and the security tab. click the 'advanced' button at the bottom and click the 'owner' tab, and click 'edit'.

here, i set the 'administrators' group for ownership, and ok'd out. you need to close the file properties now, then re-open it. now, under security, you can click the 'edit' button, and give yourself full control over the file, for all your reading, writing, altering, executing, and in this case, renaming, needs.

also a time-saving tip for increasing the odds of your success, do not change the *.dll.msi files at all during this process. that mistake cost me 'BIG.'

And that's about it. I hope your desktop will soon look as pretty as mine Dani.

[John A]

You can apply themes to Vista which alter your taskbar's appearance. If you want to manually hack the taskbar's color, you'll have to use a tool like ResHacker, or just change the color theme in Vista (although that changes everything, not just the taskbar).

Edit: looks like someone just outdid me... ;)

[Dortz]

One of the first things I tried when I tackled this hack was to use ResHack on the standard aero theme. It wasn't until I read up on the uxtheme hack that i realized it was useless to modify aero at all unless i found some way to unlock that first. lucky for me, somebody had already done that, and even taken care of a theme that looks very sleek and modern, and best of all, has several options for changing the taskbar color.

[John A]

One of the first things I tried when I tackled this hack was to use ResHack on the standard aero theme. It wasn't until I read up on the uxtheme hack that i realized it was useless to modify aero at all unless i found some way to unlock that first. lucky for me, somebody had already done that, and even taken care of a theme that looks very sleek and modern, and best of all, has several options for changing the taskbar color.

Thank you very much for finding and posting this information here. I'm sure lots of people will use this (including me, if I ever get Windows Vista).

[whitelamanite]

Follow the instructions at this link, and make sure there is nothing checked in the toolbars section of your taskbar. I just did those two things and the taskbar changed...

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/45314ff4-2a84-4ee3-93af-bac6084eb6081033.mspx?wt_svl=10121VHa1&mg_id=10121VHb1

[IMADEVISTA]

Is it possible to change the color of the taskbar from black? It's kinda ugly.

Yes, Yes you can first, but not as much as i would like...
step1. Right click on your desktop and select properties.
step2. click on window color and appearance'
step3. this should do it, im 14 and i done it on windows basic. Hopefully it should help

[Dortz]

I'm not gonna say it. someone else can, but I'm not gonna say it.

[paulderek70]

Hello, your Highness!! I hope you have found an answer to this question. If you have, can you please let me know? Thanks,

[Bob_180_Bob]

Hi paulderek70and welcome to Daniweb,
This post was last used on Jul 11th, 2008.
Read all suggested here and if you can't get your machine to do what you want start your own thread supplying details about your machine, OS and problem.
Good luck.