Zune Theme for Windows: Broken out of the Box
Microsoft, trying to stir up enthusiasm for their upcoming Zune Portable Media Player, recently released a Windows theme (free for all “Genuine” copies of Windows XP out there). It looks pretty cool, and kinda “autumnish” what with the orange and black coloring, so I thought I’d give it a try. (You can download it here.)
It looks good, but the “Common Tasks” pane in the Explorer View didn’t get styled… “Odd,” I thought. So I did some digging.
It turns out that the style properties of the Common Tasks pane is controlled by a file called shellstyle.dll that is supposed to live in the Theme’s /Shell/NormalColor/ folder. Oddly enough, the Zune theme doesn’t have a /shell/ folder; that’s why the Common Tasks pane reverts to the default style.
So what is it supposed to look like?
One would assume it would carry the orange and black coloring across to the pane. “So, what happens if I try to fix it,” I thought. Lo, and behold! It worked!
How can you fix your Zune Theme?
Open up your favorite File Explorer and navigate to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\Zune\C:\Windows\ represents the drive and directory into which you have your copy of Windows installed). Create a folder called Shell then create a folder inside Shell called NormalColor, then copy shellstyle.dll from the Zune folder into the Zune/Shell/NormalColor folder. Press F5 to refresh the folder view and there ya go! Orange and Black like it’s supposed to be.
You Can Thank me Later
Or you can use Paypal to make a donation now… up to you. ;)
