used to have a custom explorer.exe so that the start menu button could say whatever I wanted. after uninstalling litestep, it changed the registry entry back to the normal explorer.exe. I thought alright, no problem, redirected it and rebooted. oh crap, ive no start menu at all now. started a new task via the task manager and restored the registry.

Thus, my question: what did litestep do and how can I reverse it.

it would have set all the registry shell values back to explorer.exe
maybe run a google search on the reg settings: http://wiki.litestep.com/LiteStep:Installation has all the needed reg entries

Sounds like you set HKCU instead of HKCM..minor fix.

yep, didnt set HKCU, just did, everything works fine now. thanks for your help.