where is my windows shell common?

Willkommen hier im Forum, Ralph..I'm originally from Germany but my car comes from Japan

Du könntest versuchen, das Theme von Hand zu installieren:
Themes bestehen im Prinzip aus 2 Teilen: einer Steuer-Datei mit der Erweiterung .theme
und einem Ordner gleichen Namens mit den benötigten Teilen. (Beispiel Datei: aero.theme Ordner dazu: aero)
beides kopierst Du in den Ordner c:\windows\ressources\themes dann kannst Du das Theme ganz normal unter Personalize auswählen.
Sollte es sich allerdings um ein Theme handeln, das nicht von Microsoft kommt, musst Du erst z.B folgendes Programm ausführen UX Style

Translation:
You could always try to install the theme manually.
A Theme consists of 2 basic elements: a file with the extension .themes and a folder with the same name.
Jost copy both into C:\Windows\Resources\Themes and you'll find it with the other themes under Personalize.
In case your theme isn't signed by Microsoft you'd need to run this software first UX Style

-DG

Bill,
Thanks. That says pictorially, and better, that which I said in words.

karlsnooks said:

Bill,
Thanks. That says pictorially, and better, that which I said in words.

No problem, Karl. BTW, sorry if i tread on your toes, realized both of us are basically saying the same thing after posting.

thanks to all of you for your quick and very kind help!
well what can I say! karlsooks thats it thanks shell32.dll everything works again!
Great forum great guys. I am sure I contact you again with plesure!!! Have all of you a great week! ralphwh (ralph)

sorry karlsnooks

ralphwh said:

thanks to all of you for your quick and very kind help!
well what can I say! karlsooks thats it thanks shell32.dll everything works again!
Great forum great guys. I am sure I contact you again with plesure!!! Have all of you a great week! ralphwh (ralph)

Glad that we could be of assistance, und 'ne schoene Woche.

Hi, I had the exact same issue as Ralph. Here is a description of what happened:

I recently upgraded my laptop from Vista 64 Ultimate to Windows 7 64 Ultimate and have been experiencing a strange error with theme pack files.

- First thing I noticed is that .themepack files were associated with Windows Live Picture Gallery, thus double clicking on .themepack files resulted in Picture Gallery saying it didn't know what type of file I was trying to open.

- So, I changed the file association to Shell32.dll, as it should be.

- Now when I try to open a .themepack file it says, "Not a valid win 32 application"

I have another computer running Windows 7 64 Ultimate and it has never experienced such a problem. You double click on a .themepack file and it installs. I have also tried using an elevated command prompt and the assoc command to change the default association, but same problems resulted.

**Note, I am using Microsoft themes directly from the Microsoft site. Any other ideas? Thanks!