let me share a secret that has saved my a55 and computer when litestep crashes when not using default theme.
msn messenger
ya thats right msn messenger. have it set to launch at startup.
when ls crashes your computer re-boot it.
after ls crashes the messenger log-on is still there. simply go into the file menu and click on open recieved files. this will launch the windows explorer file manager. then go to the litestep folder and you can click the change to default theme icon.
wa-la
you can also switch to explorer shell this way.
"saved my a55 and computer"

oh ya im using win9X. im not sure if it works quite the same with XP.

in my experience:

win95 was an unstable OS but had a stable shell (explorer)
but whenever litestep died, upon focusing of the desktop
it would pop up taskman.exe
(so you could launch something in the manner you describe)

win98 had an unstable explorer and a stable OS
but whenever litestep died, you'd be left with whatever other apps if any, so you could respawn litestep.

[winME only saw a few boots (with uptime of minutes when it complete froze) before I reformatted and ridded that PoS.]

win2k/winXP have taskmgr.exe always bound to ctrl+shift+esc though, that's always a big relief.

does your theme crash THAT often? cause that's a problem. litestep only crashes for me when I do something stupid.

only when installing bunk themes!

ummm...the theme installer should ask if you want to revert back to the old theme. if the new theme is screwed, just hit yes to revert back.

... using ctrl+alt+del you can contrôle if litestep is still running and you can also run any exe like explorer.exe...