I need help. Whenever I load a shell, my theme stays the same. My desktop background does not change and neither does my scrollbars or anything like that. Also, whenever I open up internet Explorer, it maximizes any sort of "start bar" that is on the shell, thus covering up any i.m. windows or anything like that. Can anyone help me?

first - look in the sticky thread called "window styles" right above this
second - im not entirely sure what you mean... if you mean that it is covering the whole screen when it maximizes, look through the theme readme for some way to change the desktop area... if you are using simplicity the command will be !ChangeDesktopState

thank you.