NOOB ALERT: If I get some of the terminology mixed up (such as theme vs. shell) forgive me, I'm very new to this :)

I've installed litestep and set it as my 'shell?', thus eliminating the awful start menu etc. In keeping with the color scheme of my new 'theme?' I'd like to change the colors of things like the active window title bar, etc. to get away from the standard windows XP blue. When I go into the display properties, and choose advanced, I get the following:

(screenshot at http://members.shaw.ca/kangeroospunk/desktop.jpg )

You can see how it seems like litestep attempted to change these colors to match, as shown by the lovely setup in the advanced section on the right, however you can see on the left that only some of these changes have taken effect. All I can think of is that little color scheme pull down menu on the left, which is set to default blue as a possible culprit, however the only other options in the menu are olive green and silver.

Also, I did read that note under the advanced section that states the settings my be overridden if not using the classic windows style, but am confused as some of the settings were accepted, and I've seen numerous windows XP desktops where the changes appear to have worked.

If anyone has ideas or advice, please help me out.

Thanks!

Change "Windows and Buttons" to "Windows Classic Style" and it will change things for you.

Ah, but I have and it doesn't. Stubborn thing!

so when you change colors in Classic mode the colors on the windows do not change when you apply them?

After playing and arguing with it for a couple hours, I got most of them to change under classic, however the color scheme I want is lost when I do that. Like I said, the litestep theme seems to change them to the matching colors when it's in winxp mode, but not for classic mode where I have to approximate them and it just doesn't look as it should.

I don't understand why windows XP wasn't designed to allow us to change the blue title bar, but I don't want to return to windows classic so unless there is another way, I guess I'm stuck.

you could try windowblinds from http://www.windowblinds.net/ and see if there's a theme on skinz.org or customize.org that will maybe be to your liking.

or stylexp ;)

Hey! I thought that with some litestep skins the windows are skinned too.. As shown at some screenshots.
I dont think all those themes i have seen with skinned windows aswell are based on some windowblinds theme? ps. sorry for my bad english :P

I second Egonz - I've used nothing but stylexp for my windows themes - it organizes it beautifuly, and you can get tons and tons of themes at http://www.themexp.org :)

StyleXP can be downloaded at: http://www.tgtsoft.com

nope...LiteStep has nothing to do with skinning your windows, only to replace your explorer shell!
If you need you windows skinned, you must (can, could, should) use a windows skinning program, to name a few:

windowblinds
shellvwm

or better yet, use built in Ms Visual Styles. Now, the latter may prove somewhat difficult, but if you know what you're doing (I won't say it anymore than that) you're set.

HOWEVER, using windows xp themes will cause a problem with switching desktops. any windows you have maximized will switch desks with you. the only work around is to go with the classic windows theme, or disable the theme service, or to go with a 3rd party skinning program. unless if one of the vwm modules authors finally fixed this bug, and I just didn't hear about it??

nope deuce, the bug's still out there...
luckily i don't like maximizing windows :)

yeah, I've been "forced" to use classic style for a while now. I don't want to waste my precious resources running windowblinds, stylexp, etc. :(